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Today I saw Maddy Groot's STS talk "Decarbonization vs. Democratization? Participatory Politics and the New England Grid", which was a fascinating talk on her preliminary findings about the political framing around impediments to renewable energy transmission lines in New England.
Really interesting stuff.
Among other things, I learned that ISO New England has historically been the only body that could make decisions about our power grid, but that they have made it their practice to never implement "policy decisions" about energy sourcing or transmission.
They see their only goal as ensuring reliable energy at a reliable price, and have furthermore worked to thwart energy subsidies at the state level. It's basically a governance nightmare.
The U.S.'s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has had to step in to try to get ISO New England to be more responsive, but they continue to drag their feet.
There have *also* been issues with locals in New Hampshire resisting long distance transmission lines being run through their towns, but the press tends to focus on that story exclusively, which is a distortion.
Groot said that what the vocal locals in New Hampshire have actually asked for is to have the lines buried and also to be compensated, which is a bit different from "we don't want the lines running through here at all," so that's interesting too.
Some of the most interesting stuff I got from the talk, though, was during the Q & A, and chatting with Groot afterward. I asked her to compare the politics on long distance transmission lines (generally a plus for climate mitigation) with the politics on long distance pipelines (generally a minus for climate mitigation), and she said that one important difference is that here in the U.S., FERC can permit pipelines at the national level, but they can't do that for power lines.
So because of the way U.S. federal agencies are set up, pipelines are managed nationally, while transmission lines must be managed at the local or regional level.
Chatting with Groot after the talk, I brought up the question of whether the people resistant to having power lines run through their towns might react differently if there was some kind of dual use (e.g. land clearing creates edge habitat, which could be good for wildlife in the region, given that we have afforestation issues, or possibly some kind of combination with agriculture).
Groot noted that that kind of mixed use is the kind of thing that our mutual acquaintance @Nathanpboston talks about a lot.
(I knew there were reasons why we are friends, Nathan : ) )
But also on the topic of mixed use, Groot also mentioned that one previous proposal had been to run the transmission lines along the interstate.
This seemed like a really obvious solution to me, and I asked why they hadn't done it.
Evidently one of the answers was that running the lines along the interstate would mean they had to pay rent to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
So... there's a lot going on with why these projects don't always take off.
@dynamic wow I would love to have seen this talk! I hope Maddy can present it again or record it. It sounds spot on and so timely. Thank you for this thread.
I'm sure we'll be hearing more from her. She hasn't even written her dissertation yet : )
@dynamic@social.coop that's interesting! I mostly heard the story from the news perspective and it seemed like the issue was always about people refusing it outright. It didn't feel too surprising at the time but it's neat to hear there's more to the story.
@dynamic Burying long distance transmission lines is extremely expensive, so it may as well be "we don't want them at all" for all practical purposes.
Air is an excellent electrical insulator while also allowing efficient, free cooling, and the wires can thermally expand and contract (sag and tighten) as needed during different load conditions.
Underground, you have to do complicated stuff with oil-impregnated paper and pumps and whatnot. And that's besides the drilling/pipelaying costs.