A Department of Energy official and a South Dakota utility regulator were among several public and private sector officials who told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on June 17 that the nation needs regional transmission planning and siting to meet the challenge of delivering renewable energy to population centers.

The greatest challenge to developing the appropriate network of wires and generating and delivering electricity to the American public "is the difficulty of coordinating state and federal permitting efforts and authorities," Kevin Kolevar, DOE assistant secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, said at a June 17 committee hearing. "For that reason, the department strongly supports regional approaches to addressing the challenges of electricity resource planning."

If the United States wants to support clean energy, the nation will need to develop new transmission, Kolevar said. To achieve grid reliability and support the development of clean energy, "we must harmonize the multitude of local, state and federal regulatory rules such that they complement, not conflict with each other. And to do this, we must coordinate efforts to meet electricity demands regionally, and not just at the state level."

Kolevar noted that in most parts of the country, wholesale electricity markets have become regional in scale. Given that much future generation will be distant from load, and often in another state, state planning "needs to be followed with regional-scale planning and coordination," he said.

South Dakota Public Utilities Commission Chairman Gary Hanson told the committee that transmission lines need to be regionalized to achieve the greatest environmental benefit. "This is not to say that states' rights are to be ignored. Just as states have a role in the siting of interstate highways, states need to continue to have an active role in transmission decisions," Hanson said.

Even so, a regional transmission system "requires a punctual regional transmission authority with regional siting authority," Hanson added. "We must overcome the inability or unwillingness of individual states to provide timely action on proposed interstate transmission projects."

In some instances, regulatory bottlenecks are holding back the development of transmission lines and renewable energy projects in an effort to prevent clean coal projects, Hanson said. "Local politics and parochialism in one state should not be allowed to prohibit the economic and environmentally friendly construction of renewable energy facilities in another state," he argued.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the committee, said that the federal government has been trying to encourage the development of renewable electricity since the late 1970s, yet renewable generation still accounts for only about 3% of the nation's electricity supply. One of the most important barriers to boosting renewable energy generation is the inadequacy of transmission, he said.

"We need to be sure that FERC's rules for planning, siting, pricing, interconnection and openness of access are adequate," Bingaman said. Beyond that, the nation needs to move electricity from solar, wind and geothermal resources from sparsely populated areas to large metropolitan and industrial centers.

"Development of transmission lines to carry such resources to load centers has to be done across many states and through many jurisdictions and siting the lines is a serious problem," Bingaman said. Often states through which the lines pass do not benefit from either the jobs that come to the states where the generation is located, or from the electricity that is carried to customers in other states. This makes it more difficult for them to face the opposition that often accompanies such projects, he added.

In addition, cost allocation often poses a problem. "Customers in the states where the plants are built and where the transmission is essentially just passing through do not want to shoulder the primary burden of paying for the lines that are supplying somebody else, Bingaman noted.