Real Estate & Property Law

Electric Grid

By Alan Ackerman

The New York Times

Environmentalists dream of a bigger and “smarter” electric grid that could move vast amounts of clean electricity from windswept plains and sunny deserts to distant cities.Skip to next paragraph

Such a grid, they argue, could help utilities match demand with supply on the hottest afternoons, allow customers to decide when to run their appliances and decrease the risk of blackouts, like the one that paralyzed much of the East in 2003.

The Obama administration has vowed to make the grid smarter and tougher, allocating $11 billion in grants and loan guarantees to the task in the economic stimulus package passed by the House last week.

But it will take a lot more than money to transform the grid from a form that served well in the last century, when electricity was produced mostly near the point of consumption, and when the imperative was meeting demand, no matter how high it grew.

Opposition to power lines from landowners and neighbors, local officials or environmental groups, especially in rural areas, makes expansion difficult — even when the money for it is available. And some experts argue that in the absence of a broader national effort to encourage cleaner fuels, even the smartest grid will do little to reduce consumption of fuels that contribute to climate change.

In fact, energy experts say that simply building a better grid is not enough, because that would make the cheap electricity that comes from burning coal available in more parts of the country. That could squeeze out generators that are more expensive but cleaner, like those running on natural gas. The solution is to put a price on emissions from dirtier fuels and incorporate that into the price of electricity, or find some other way to limit power generation from coal, these experts say.  

The New York Times, which generally holds itself out to be the most accurate of media, recently prepared an article which is an offering on how the electric transmission industry has great problems in property acquisition. It utilized the comments of Mr. Welch, President of the International Transmission Company, stating that one owner held up a 26-mile line for three years. To the contrary, Mr. Welch fails to notify the New York Times writer, Matthew Wald, that the line traversing the turning point was already serviced by an existing Detroit Edison line.   Further, rather than going parallel to the Detroit Edison line, the International Transmission Company determined it would be best to try to save money by using public right-of-way (roadways), although creating danger to the adjacent traffic, attempting to avoid paying compensation to those who would be harmed.

Finally, there seems to be a lack of research in the article given that one of the three members of the Michigan Public Service Commission strongly objected to the routing proposed by ITC. Interestingly, the Public Service Commission (MPSC) serves generally as a rubber stamp for engineering plans of creating proposed routes. Here the MPSC did not act as a rubber stamp despite providing great deference to utilities.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).