I am not familiar with the line described in this story but I assume that the river in question was a congressionally designated Wild and Scenic River. If so, I am not surprised that the permit process took a year to complete and the transmission company shouldn't have been either. Proposing something as intrusive as a transmission line in such an area is virtually guaranteed to take a long time to approve.
Case in point: the Sunrise Powerlink. The route of this transmission line, ostensibly to bring renewable power from Imperial County to San Diego, originally ran right through Anza-Borrego State Park, California's largest state park, and through part of the state-designated wilderness area in that park, also the state's largest wilderness area. At first the proponent, a utility company, insisted that there were no alternatives to that original route. Then they said that, while there were some alternatives, all of them too involved going through Anza-Borrego. After approximately two years the permitting agencies, which included the Department of the Interior, approved an alternative route that they -- not the utility -- had identified. This route did not go near the park and had fewer environmental impacts.
The Sunrise Powerlink is a perfect example of why transmission planning needs to be done differently than it has been done in the past. Working hard from the beginning to identify a route that has minimal conflicts maximizes the chance that the permitting process will proceed with minimal delay and controversy. In contrast, selection of a route like the original Sunrise Powerlink guarantees both controversy and delay.
Development of our Google Earth layer is one of the things NRDC is doing to help avoid future Sunrise Powerlinks. We believe that new transmission will be necessary to access the renewable energy we need to help save the planet, but like everything else, the new lines must be done right.
]]>What's so important about these numbers? They mean that we have enough renewable resources to do their development and any needed transmission right!
More specifically, they mean that we don't need to look to places with unique and sensitive resources to site renewables generation projects. We can avoid those places - many of which have been identified by land managers and/or legislators at both the state and federal level - and look instead for areas where development would pose fewer conflicts. And, we can think about transmission when we are identifying those renewable areas, to avoid situations in which proponents of a new line asserts that it "must" go through a protected place in order to access renewables.
NRDC's new Google Earth layer is designed specifically to help identify places where development isn't appropriate as a first and necessary step towards identifying where it is. We need to develop our renewable resources if we are to address the challenge of climate change, but that development must be carried out in an environmentally responsible way. If it is done right, informed environmentalists will, I believe, stand up in support.
]]>First, determining whether development of a particular area is appropriate requires more resource information than we presently have. This is particularly true of wildlife information. Our Google layer has very little such information because it is currently unavailable - at least in GIS form. Neither generation projects nor transmission lines can be sited without knowledge of where endangered, threatened and rare species can be found, and where their habitat areas are, including key areas essential to their survival, like migration corridors. We hope to add more such data to our map in the future but, even after we do, that won't be enough.
Second, decisions about whether a particular area is appropriate for development need to be made in a public and transparent process, in which wildlife experts, local residents and a host of others can participate fully.
Lastly, such decisions cannot be made in the absence of thorough environmental review. Renewable energy projects and green transmission lines, just like other energy projects and lines, have undeniable environmental impacts. While we hope to add more information of all kinds, in addition to wildlife data, our map will never substitute for detailed consideration of the resources of a particular area and the potential impacts of development on them.
Ideally, decisions about siting green projects and green lines should be made on a regional basis through a process that not only involves multiple stakeholders and careful environmental review, but also provides a way to compare potential development areas at the landscape level in order to determine which of those areas are best and why. Hopefully our map will help concerned citizens advocate for the initiation of such a process and arm them with information to be effective advocates in it.
]]>These unique and sensitive areas have been allocated to a variety of different land systems, each with its own managing agency. At the federal level these systems include, in addition to national parks and national forests, national wildlife refuges and lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, an agency in the Department of the Interior. The acronyms of the management agencies would make a dizzying alphabet soup. And, to make things even more complicated, all of these land systems are subject to different management prescriptions which impose different levels of protection. Under the circumstances, it's probably not that surprising that lots of energy projects, including renewable energy projects, and transmission lines, including lines purportedly for renewable energy, have been proposed for some wildly inappropriate places.
NRDC's brand new interactive mapping tool brings together for the first time ever the federal lands and some state lands in Google Earth format so that anyone and everyone can see where they are. What's more, we've simplified the complex statutory and regulatory schemes that apply to these lands into three categories - lands that are protected from energy development of all kinds, including renewable energy, lands on which energy development will be subject to strict limits, and lands that should be avoided to minimize controversy and speed development of renewables project. Our maps are not complete yet and we are not saying that lands outside these categories are appropriate for development (more about these topics in other posts). Nonetheless, we hope our maps will go a long way toward our goal of helping generation projects and lines get properly sited and impacts to sensitive wildlife and their habitats, vulnerable ecosystems and other unique and sensitive resources minimized.
]]>The answers are simple - but I'll admit they took a while for me to see them.
Climate change is the biggest challenge facing our planet today. To address that challenge we must access renewable energy resources as well as do all the other things many of my NRDC colleagues have been advocating for decades - like conserve energy and increase energy efficiency. Many of the nation's best renewable resources are located on public lands and hundreds of applications have been filed with federal land managers to build generation facilities to convert those resources to electricity. To convey that electricity to the people who need it will take new transmission lines or at least upgrades in many cases. All of these activities - just like all other forms of energy development - will have environmental impacts. But the thing to understand and remember is that global warming too has environmental impacts and those impacts are being felt right now in our national parks, our national forests and other federal lands. As with the work on energy development I've done in the past, the key is to make sure that these generation projects and any needed transmission are appropriately sited and operated.
The Western United States holds significant sources of renewable energy - solar, wind and geothermal resources. The nation and these states need to develop this energy to solve both the economic crisis and the climate crisis that we now face. But the West is also home to remarkable wilderness and stunning landscapes, diverse wildlife, fragile ecosystems and irreplaceable cultural resources. Finding sites for new renewable energy projects and electricity transmission lines where development will do the least damage to the West's unique and sensitive resources will be a major challenge, but one that can and must be met.
Right now, federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management are developing policies for siting and operating renewable energy projects and transmission lines on federal lands. In some states, there's been a virtual land rush with literally hundreds of applications for large-scale renewables projects, mostly solar, pending before the BLM, and the first environmental reviews of those projects will soon be made public. California and the Western Governors' Association have each instituted multi-stakeholder processes aimed at facilitating renewables development, while eight western states have laws requiring utilities to generate increased amounts of electricity from renewables. To bring this new power to the people who need it, new transmission lines will be needed. Clearly, all this development - while urgently needed to reduce our reliance on electricity generated by fossil fuel, especially coal - will have significant impacts on the lands involved, whether federal, private or state. Equally clearly, some places are better suited than others for renewable projects and new transmission lines.
To help find the balance of meeting our energy needs while protecting sensitive resources, NRDC today launched a brand new Google Earth interactive mapping tool that provides maps of 13 states in the western United States to help environmental activists, transmission planners, renewable energy generators, regulators and others identify areas where land uses, like energy development, are legally restricted. Other data layers highlight areas that should be avoided in energy development, including habitats critically important to wildlife and lands proposed for inclusion in the federal wilderness system. Users exploring specific geographic areas (such as those proposed for energy development) can easily see how little land is legally off-limits as well as many of the other areas with unique and sensitive resources that deserve special protection. With Matthew McKinzie, NRDC's resident GIS genius who actually created this site, I'm going to be blogging about its many features going forward.
Once these unsuitable places are off the table, the task of identifying where renewable development is appropriate can be taken up. With this information, we can work together to make sure renewables development is carried out in an environmentally responsible manner - on non-sensitive, non-controversial places. Avoiding development on sensitive and controversial lands and appropriate areas will help secure widespread support and prompt approval of projects. Going to non-controversial areas will help ensure that renewable resources are brought on line as quickly as possible.
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