State utility regulators said Wednesday that they cannot revoke their approval of the Grain Belt Express electricity transmission line, despite a recent invitation from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to reexamine the long-debated energy project.
Officials from the Missouri Public Service Commission said at their weekly meeting that the regulatory agency did not have legal authority to reverse its decision on the proposed 800-mile, multi-state power line that would stretch from Kansas to Indiana, and help supply wind energy and cost savings to the grid.
“Those cases are final,” said Rodney Massman, the general counsel for the PSC. “And that principle has been true under previous case law dating back to 1935.”
Beyond the legal question at hand, some overall support for the project was reiterated, too.
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For example, PSC Commissioner Glen Kolkmeyer said he believed that regional grid overseers from both the Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator “have convinced us with their arguments that we’re going to be short on [energy] generation and short on transmission.”
The conversation was prompted after Bailey launched an investigation into the energy project late last month, seeking information from its prospective developers, while also questioning its economic justification.
The company behind the project, Invenergy, has said that the project would account for $52 billion in energy cost savings to U.S. consumers over 15 years.
“The Attorney General has no authority to interfere with the Missouri Public Service Commission or its final approval of this project,” said Catherine Hanaway, the lead counsel for Grain Belt Express and a former U.S. Attorney and Republican Missouri House speaker, in a statement Wednesday.
“Grain Belt Express seeks to bring an end to the Attorney General’s unlawful and politically motivated investigation,” she said.
Grain Belt has been on the drawing board for more than a decade, and has withstood recurring attempts to derail the project from politicians and others.
The project still faces some political opposition at the federal level, with Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley claiming in a press release last week that he had “secured a pledge from Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright to halt the Grain Belt Express.”
Then, on Wednesday, Hawley issued another release, saying that he’d filed a one-page amendment in a spending rescissions package before the Senate that seeks to block the agency’s conditional $4.9 billion loan guarantee to the project, announced last year.
If the agency’s pledge to block the project is secure, it’s not clear why the legislative maneuver to negate its previously approved loan would be necessary.
Representatives for Sen. Hawley’s office did not respond to messages Wednesday. The Department of Energy also did not respond to messages related to the matter.
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