The Energy Markets Podcast S2E6: Larry Gasteiger of WIRES speaks to the crucial role of transmission development as part of a national effort to get to a clean-energy grid.
Larry Gasteiger, executive director of WIRES, an international trade group advocating for transmission development in North America, discusses the broad and systematic difficulties in getting necessary long-distance transmission lines sited and built. He shares his views on ongoing developments before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy and in Congress that aim to address the many issues that cause transmission line siting to take frustratingly long years to complete - assuming that one of the several states involved doesn't veto the project along the way. This infrastructure must be built if the U.S. is to meet its decarbonization goals for the electric grid, he says. The WIRES official speaks to his view that competitive processes to get transmission built haven't worked thus far, while holding out the prospect that down the road, perhaps after a pilot project irons out the kinks in the process, competitive transmission development could become viable for developing long-distance, multi-state transmission lines. A recent Senate hearing where committee members were overtly hostile to FERC's recent natural gas pipeline policy statement, which addressed climate change considerations under the National Environmental Policy Act, was a "poster child" for the sort of blowback the commission's pending transmission policy statement could run into without near unanimous agreement on the controversial issues, he observed.