High-voltage electric transmission may not be the most exhilarating component of accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy. However, it’s certainly one of the most important and, unfortunately, one in the most need of new ideas, attitudes, and solutions for how we build it.
That’s why the work of the NextGen Highways coalition, co-led by the Great Plains Institute, is so critical and why its recent policy accomplishment in our home state of Minnesota is an important win. Using its new approach of building state-level coalitions to target specific policy and regulatory barriers at the local level, NextGen Highways is working to simplify one of the significant barriers to building more electric transmission: where to put the infrastructure.
Building more transmission along existing roadways
NextGen Highways is focused on promoting the co-location of high-voltage electric transmission and telecommunications infrastructure in existing public rights-of-way (ROWs)—think highways and railroads. This is because building new transmission lines hundreds of miles long across private land has the potential to impact hundreds or thousands of landowners, communities, and ecosystems. Instead, using public ROWs puts transmission infrastructure on already disturbed land and, importantly, dramatically minimizes the number of permits and permissions project developers need to secure from landowners.
This matters because when it comes to the extremely complex process of planning and building electric transmission, anywhere that process can be simplified is highly valuable. Plus, NextGen Highways’ research shows that using public ROWs for transmission can be significantly more popular than solely using private or agricultural land.
That is why this year, the coalition took its national work to the state level in Minnesota, having identified significant barriers to transmission co-location in public ROWs in state statutes and regulatory policy across the country that require state action to remove.
Achieving the right system conditions for change
NextGen Highways launched its first coalition in Minnesota at the start of this year. Working with a diverse group of highly respected and influential partners, NextGen Highways successfully changed state statute to ensure high-voltage electric transmission can co-locate in all state and federal highways and roadways. The process included utility companies, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), clean energy advocates, labor and environmental groups, and other stakeholders.
This proactive, collaborative process represents how GPI brings together ambitious goals and the right stakeholders to drive positive consensus around solutions built on common values and delivering equitable benefits to people and communities.
Transmission is a model for this work: it’s big, it’s complex, it affects many different stakeholders, and it delivers cascading benefits to local, regional, and national interests. Moreover, it’s the definition of creating the system conditions for accelerating clean energy technology and infrastructure deployment.
Congratulations to the NextGen Highways team and its coalition partners!
Read more about the NextGen Highways work in Minnesota in a recent press release.
We’d be happy to tell you more about our work to achieve an equitable net-zero carbon economy. To learn more, visit our Energy Systems team’s web page.
