An Energy Transition Needs Lots of Power Lines.

January 04, 2022

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Dan Gearino (Inside Climate News) This 1970s Minnesota Farmers’ Uprising Tried to Block One. What Can it Teach Us? As the country moves toward a massive build-out of transmission lines, a decades-old rebellion offers a way through potential opposition. -- If the United States is to make a transition to clean energy, it will need to build many more transmission lines—the thick wires that deliver power from rural areas, where there’s enough open space for wind and solar, to cities where the most power is consumed.

But the process of building those lines is likely to be fraught with conflict and delays, because people in rural and suburban communities often don’t want to see wires and tall metal towers in their backyards.

...

The arguments in that fight—over a 436-mile power line carrying power from a coal plant in central North Dakota to the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul—started out with lawyers sitting around tables in government boardrooms but ended with protesters in frozen fields carrying rifles and baseball bats.

...

One of the lessons was that power companies need to engage the public early and be willing to change course in the face of well-reasoned criticism, as opposed to ramming through a project.

“You don’t ask for public opinion if you’re not going to listen,” said Will Kaul, who retired in 2017 as a vice president after a career with Great River Energy and its predecessor, Cooperative Power Association.

Opponents of a power line also need to be confident that the process is fair. George Crocker, an environmental advocate who was one of the leaders of the 1970s protest movement, said much of the outrage stemmed from a sense that big companies and the government had already made up their minds, and that any process was just for show.

...

To be able to support a grid that runs mostly on renewable energy, the United States needs to double, triple or even quadruple it’s transmission capacity, according to several recent studies. One of them, the Net-Zero America report from Princeton University, projected that the country would need to spend $360 to $390 billion on new transmission lines by 2030 to meet climate goals.

“We have this opportunity as a nation to tap into the best resources, but we need transmission to do that,” said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, a consulting firm that focuses on transmission. The best resources, he said, are wind and solar obtained from the parts of the country that are the most windy and sunny.

The Biden Administration is hoping to set off a construction boom through increases in federal incentives for the lines, including $5 billion in the just-signed infrastructure bill, and proposals for much more. The bill also includes an expansion of federal authority to approve transmission projects in situations where states are standing in the way. READ MORE

Opinion: Imagine Virginia’s icy traffic catastrophe — but with only electric vehicles (Washington Post)

Hydro Quebec suspends work in Canada on controversial energy corridor (Maine Public Radio)

Overwhelmed by Solar Projects, the Nation’s Largest Grid Operator Seeks a Two-Year Pause on Approvals -- “It’s a kink in the system,” says one developer trying to bring solar jobs to coal country. “The planet does not have time for a delay.” (Inside Climate News)

Federal District Court Stops Cardinal-Hickory Creek Transmission Line Running Through Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (Environmental Law and Policy Center)

New Report Finds Significant Benefits from Upgrading Existing U.S. Transmission Grid (American Council on Renewable Energy)

Report finds transmission grid upgrades would save $140 billion or more over next decade (Solar Power World Online)

Misinformation is derailing renewable energy projects across the United States (NPR; includes AUDIO)

FERC's electric meeting--TEEING UP TRANSMISSION: (Politico's Morning Energy)

FERC launches notice for transmission planning rulemaking (Politico)

The US has more clean energy projects planned than the grid can handle: Without major policy reforms and grid upgrades, much of the 1.4-terawatt queue of solar, wind and battery projects may never get built, two new reports find. (Canary Media)

Record Amounts of Zero-carbon Electricity Generation and Storage Now Seeking Grid Interconnection (Berkeley Lab)

Queued Up… But in Need of Transmission (U.S. Department of Energy)

THEIR DAY IN COURT (Politico's Morning Energy)

THE OFFSHORE WIND HAMMER: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Backtracking on transmission competition --THE COMPLICATIONS OF TRANSMISSION COMPETITION (Politico's Morning Energy)

FERC OFFICIAL AIMS TO TACKLE NIMBYISM: (Politico's Morning Energy)

DOE loan office director skeptical about pace of transmission buildout: The long-dormant Loan Programs Office has $40 billion in lending authority, making it a crucial part of the Biden administration’s clean energy push. (Politico Pro/E&E News)

Europe’s electricity industry calls for €400bn investment in distribution grids (EurActiv)

Fierce local battles over power lines are a bottleneck for clean energy (CNBC)

Is Burying Power Lines Fire-Prevention Magic, or Magical Thinking? With power lines sparking more wildfires as climate change makes landscapes more flammable and drives a movement to “electrify everything,” a simple solution is gaining acceptance despite the cost. (Inside Climate News)

Wind expansion hindered by 'messy' local dynamics: Zoning restrictions could jeopardize as much as 77 percent of potential wind development areas in Iowa, according to a new study. The findings raise questions about how the nation can achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. (Politico Pro)

“Building a Better Grid” DOE Initiative Outlines Plan for Nationwide Transmission (Environmental and Energy Study Institute)

Why the Texas grid causes the High Plains to turn off its wind turbines: While wind farms in the region could help power and lower energy costs for at least 9 million homes, significant infrastructure upgrades would be needed to supply electricity from the region to other parts of the state. (Texas Tribune)

Modeling 'IRA' carbon cuts: Caveats, uncertainty and luggage -- Emissions models can understate the difficulty of rapidly reducing carbon dioxide this decade. Yet most observers are accepting at face value the Senate climate bill's promise to cut carbon almost in half. (E&E News/Politico Pro)

High court says Maine voters alone couldn’t stop CMP corridor (Bangor Daily News)

New England Power Line Moves Forward (World War Zero; includes VIDEOs)

Oil wish list or renewables boost? Manchin bill may be both -- The West Virginia Democrat's proposal could expand the network of transmission lines needed for clean energy — while leading to the construction of more fossil fuel projects. (E&E News/Politico Pro)

What Is Permitting Reform? Here’s a Primer on the Drive to Fast Track Energy Projects—Both Clean and Fossil Fuel -- It’s a return to Washington’s biggest energy debate, with Democrats and climate advocates divided among themselves, and mostly at odds with Republicans. (Inside Climate News)

$2.5B transmission line could 'unlock' shared renewables -- The planned project from Allete and Grid United would allow more energy to flow across the U.S., enabling the Midwest to send power to the West and vice versa. (Politico Pro)

Allete, Grid United plan $2.5B transmission line linking Western, Eastern interconnections (Utility Dive)

North Plains Connector transmission line will tie eastern and western US grid (Smart Energy International)

HVDC transmission line to connect three ISO regions -- The 385-mile North Plains Connector project to be built by 2029 will ease power transmission congestion and allow clean energy onto the grid. (PV Magazine)

Ice age fossils slow massive power line for renewable energy (E&E News Greenwire)

Maine transmission line is stalled despite court victories (E&E News Climatewire)

Court clears Midwest power line's path through wildlife refuge -- Utilities say the Cardinal-Hickory Creek project is critical to bringing large amounts of renewable energy online. (Politico Pro)

FERC poised to answer critical question: Who pays for new power lines? Billions of dollars are needed for transmission projects, but lawmakers have been stumped over how those costs should be shared. (Politico Pro)

Legal Challenges Continue for SunZia Transmission Line: Southern Arizona tribes and San Pedro Valley residents continue their legal challenges to halt construction of the largest renewable energy project in U.S. history. (Inside Climate News)

Excerpt from Inside Climate News: In the past, PJM’s energy project queue was dominated by a few large projects like big natural gas power plants. Now, PJM officials said, they are receiving a proliferation of smaller projects, each needing study.

“Our system wasn’t designed to handle that kind of growth,” said Kenneth S. Seiler, vice president of planning at PJM.

About 2,500 projects are awaiting action by the grid operator, which is based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia.

PJM officials are proposing a two-phased solution.

They want to move to a new approval process that puts projects that are the most ready for construction at the front of the line, and discourages those that might be more speculative or that have not secured all their financing.

PJM officials said they have reached a reasonable consensus among their members for that plan. However, they are also proposing an interim period with a two-year delay on about 1,250 projects in their queue, and a deferral on the review of new projects until the fourth quarter of 2025, with final decisions on those coming as late as the end of 2027.

“We are taking a pause,” Seiler said of the grid operator’s proposal. “We are refining the process to deal with these smaller types of projects. We will catch up.”

...

Still, Seiler said he’s not certain whether PJM can attain the Biden goal of achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035. PJM in December announced a study looking at how it could boost renewable energy mix to 50 percent by 2035. With nuclear energy in the region factored in, that could get the PJM grid to about 60 to 70 percent carbon free, he said.

...

National studies show grid operators across the country have a growing queue of energy projects, many that do not pan out and actually clog up the system. In 2021, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that only 24 percent of projects nationally seeking connection from 2000 to 2015 were built, and completion percentages since then appeared to be declining.

Last year, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, a national group advocating for modernization of high voltage transmission, made the case in a report that backlogs were “needlessly increasing electricity costs for consumers by delaying the construction of new projects which are cheaper than existing electricity production. Because most of these projects are located in remote rural areas, this backlog is harming rural economic development and job creation.”

...

Solutions are needed beyond what PJM has proposed, she (Gizelle Wray, senior director of regulatory affairs and counsel for the Solar Energy Industries Association) said, adding that the association hopes FERC will move the country toward better transmission and interconnection policies.

...

In addition to retooling its approval process, PJM should increase the size of its staff to meet the demand and urgency for renewable energy, Edelen (Adam Edelen, a former Kentucky state auditor who runs a company working to bring solar projects and jobs to ailing coal communities in Appalachia) said.

“Staffing is an issue,” conceded Seiler.

But Seiler said qualified engineers would need to be found. And then, he said, “it takes several years to train somebody to do a lot of this work.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Environmental Law and Policy Center: “The U.S. District Court’s comprehensive decision concluding that approvals of the massive Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line violated environmental laws is well-grounded in law and supported by the facts”

Madison, WI – Four conservation groups – the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Driftless Area Land Conservancy, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife – prevailed in a January 14 Opinion by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. The detailed Opinion said federal agencies’ approval of ATC, ITC and Dairyland Power’s proposed 102-mile Cardinal-Hickory Creek (CHC) transmission line violated federal environmental laws designed to protect the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires full and fair consideration of reasonable alternatives that are less environmentally damaging and less costly.

The Court’s Opinion stated: “The Utilities are pushing forward with construction on either side of the Refuge, even without an approved path through the Refuge, in order to make any subsequent challenge to a Refuge crossing extremely prejudicial to their sunk investment, which will fall on their ratepayers regardless of completion of the CHC project, along with a guaranteed return on the Utilities’ investment in the project.” READ MORE

Excerpt from NPR: Yet every single rural utility-scale wind and solar project needs local or state approval to get built, says Sarah Mills, who researches rural renewable energy at the University of Michigan. And she says it's in those often-fractious discussions about approval that misinformation is sometimes halting and stalling the installation of the renewables the climate needs. "At the end of the day, if local governments are not setting rules that allow for the infrastructure to be sited, those policies cannot be achieved," Mills says.

Misinformation gets mixed up in decisions over renewable projects

Last year, a Department of Energy study found that setback regulations now represent the single-greatest barrier to securing locations for wind projects in the U.S. Setbacks limit how close wind projects can be to buildings, and Mills says they often make sense to reduce things such as noise and "shadow flicker," the moving shadows and strobing sunlight that turbines can cast onto buildings. But she says misinformation can fuel setbacks that are more stringent than needed and sometimes act as outright bans on renewable energy.

In Ohio, setbacks and other rules associated with renewable projects have historically been set at the state level. But in October, a new law, SB 52, went into effect giving counties the ability to make exclusion zones with no utility-scale wind and solar projects.

(Jeremy) Kitson, the science teacher, testified in support of the zones, arguing that turbines negatively affect property values.
...

But Ben Hoen, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says his more than 15 years of research has shown that wind turbines have little to no impact on nearby property values. Hoen says, "We have not found evidence of property value impacts despite studying it over multiple periods of time."
...

Hoen does say that studies in the Netherlands and United Kingdom have found some effects on property values, but they were far smaller than Kitson's reference to studies showing a 20%-40% depreciation.

In about half of states, regulations around how and whether to build rural utility-scale solar and wind are determined on the local level, Mills says. "These local officials are not necessarily experts in energy," she says. "And so when you have people coming and stating things as facts, especially if there's nobody fact-checking everything, right, it's difficult. They're certainly making decisions based on what they're hearing."
...

In recent years, some of the misinformation about renewable energy has come from former President Donald Trump, who frequently makes misleading and false anti-wind claims at his rallies and media appearances, including the untrue idea that wind turbine noise causes cancer.
...

Other misleading ideas about renewable energy come from groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry, like the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
...

But Facebook is one of the biggest drivers of misleading content about renewable energy, says Josh Fergen, a researcher at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
...

Fergen's paper concluded that posts in the two Facebook pages were "increasing perceptions of human health and public safety risks related to wind by sharing news of disasters and misinformation over health assessment risks."

...

But Dahvi Wilson, vice president of public affairs for Apex Clean Energy, says her company is finding that across the country, local engagement is becoming increasingly difficult given community suspicions of renewable energy.

"I think for a long time, and maybe still in some places, developers thought, 'Well, we just need to give better information. We just need to give more information.' And it's like, 'it's so not about that at all!'" Wilson says. "It's about who you trust and if anybody's going to believe you if you're a company." READ MORE

Excerpt from Canary Media: The proposed wind, solar and battery projects seeking interconnection to U.S. transmission grids today are enough to bring the country to 80 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030. But based on historical trends, less than a quarter of those planned projects are likely to be built.

And even the best-positioned projects that already have the land rights, construction financing and power-purchase contracts necessary to move forward are likely to face years of delay and potentially millions of dollars of grid upgrade costs before being able to connect to the grid. These barriers could prevent many planned projects from reaching completion — and block the country from decarbonizing fast enough to prevent the most devastating effects of global warming.

...

“Entering a transmission interconnection queue is only one of many steps in the development process,” the report states. “Projects must also have agreements with landowners and communities, power purchasers, equipment suppliers, and financiers, and may face transmission upgrade requirements.”

And the trends on these fronts are getting worse, not better. Since 2015, the time it takes for projects to secure interconnection agreements has risen from about a year and a half to more than three and a half years in 2021, the report finds.

...

Transmission deployments have fallen from an annual average of 2,000 miles between 2012 and 2016 to an annual average of just 700 miles between 2017 and 2021.

This lack of new transmission capacity combined with booming project queues has led to longer interconnection wait times, rising costs and uncertainties for projects seeking interconnection, as well as a greater proportion of projects withdrawing before they can secure interconnection agreements, according to LBNL data.

...

Multiple studies indicate the U.S. will need hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new transmission to integrate the amount of clean energy needed to decarbonize the grid. A similarly large body of research suggests that existing transmission development and interconnection policies are making it increasingly difficult for new clean energy projects to come online.

...

But in order to prioritize these backlogged projects, PJM will also have to impose a two-year delay on about 1,250 other projects in the queue and will not accept applications for new projects until late 2025.

...

But other grid operators have been assigning almost all the costs of upgrading the grid to accommodate new wind and solar projects to the project developers themselves.

That’s a problem, clean energy boosters say, because slow transmission expansion over the past half-decade has left many grids without enough capacity to absorb new generation. That, in turn, has led to new wind, solar and battery projects being saddled with the costs of grid upgrades that would benefit the system at large, including conventional forms of generation.

Take the example of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the country’s two Midwestern grid operators, which require new projects to pay between 90 to 100 percent of the cost of grid upgrades needed to interconnect them. Those upgrade costs have risen dramatically for recent interconnection queues, to $4.6 billion in upgrades for 10.4 GW of transmission in SPP and nearly $2.5 billion of upgrades in MISO South, according to September report by consultancy ICF on behalf of the American Council on Renewable Energy trade group.

...

But as long as individual projects are forced to pay for those upgrades, “other users of the shared system are receiving [them] at little to no cost,” the report states.

...

Other groups have asked FERC to consider asking grid operators and the utilities that operate transmission grids to use more advanced technologies that could expand the capacity of the existing grid. These grid-enhancing technologies — dynamic line rating systems, advanced power flow controls, topology optimization and advanced conductors — could potentially double the amount of wind and solar power that can be brought online across the country in the coming years, according to recent studies.

Nevertheless, there’s a growing consensus among policymakers and regulators that the sheer scope of the clean energy buildout needed to reduce the carbon emissions from the U.S. electricity sector will require much more new transmission, no matter what. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: THEIR DAY IN COURT: Developers of a controversial hydropower transmission project in Maine will have their arguments heard today in court on the constitutionality of a ballot measure approved by state voters in November that nullified the project. The New England Clean Energy Connect would carry hydropower from Canada into the New England grid to power 1.2 million homes. But doing so would require cutting through 53 miles of forest to build new transmission lines.

Nearly 6 in 10 Maine voters backed the referendum last year — the most expensive ballot campaign in state history — to stop the project. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court will consider challenges to the referendum and other issues this afternoon.

The project has created strange alliances. Political foes have pushed for the project to proceed, with Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, former Republican Gov. and Mills’ 2022 challenger Paul LePage, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in favor of the $950 million plan. Meanwhile, some environmentalists and energy companies that would stand to lose money from the project coming on line have fought against it. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: THE OFFSHORE WIND HAMMER: The governors of New Jersey and Oregon are leaning hard into the Biden administration's offshore wind goals, but acknowledged obstacles to their vision during the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami on Tuesday.

Projects face opposition from commercial fishing interests and line-of-sight objectors, according to the governors. “We want to make sure that we’re not ignoring people,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. “Those [issues] are manageable in my opinion.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown also identified transmission lines as a “huge challenge for the entire Western region,” including how to construct them safely with the wildfire risk and in the right way, particularly for tribal communities. Murphy said he is optimistic about his administration’s commitment to 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035 despite the transmission challenges, but noted that “sometimes you have to, for lack of a better phrase, drop the hammer and use something like eminent domain.”

GRID GIRDS FOR CLEAN ENERGY WAVE: The largest organized power market in the U.S. released a report Tuesday that found the region, which stretches from the Mid-Atlantic to Chicago, expects to add more than 100,000 megawatts of onshore wind, offshore wind, solar and energy storage to the grid in the next 15 years. At the end of last year, the U.S. marked more than 200,000 megawatts of clean energy resources in total, according to the American Clean Power Association.

In order to accommodate the large wave of resources, the PJM Interconnection grid operator will need to make significant grid upgrades, expecting to cost over $3 billion, the report found. To plan for the expected glut of clean energy resources, PJM will conduct several studies outlining potential transmission build-out scenarios over the next year, as well as work to fix the region’s clogged interconnection queue. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: FERC OFFICIAL AIMS TO TACKLE NIMBYISM: Elin Katz, FERC’s director of the relatively new Office of Public Participation, is thinking about how to avoid more disorderly forms of public engagement that have plagued FERC and the power sector in recent years — such as demonstrations and lawsuits against new energy infrastructure, including pipelines. She also hopes to better educate the public about the benefits of electric transmission in particular to mitigate the “NIMBYism” often associated with the large-scale power lines needed to decarbonize the power grid.

“One of my main goals is to provide a constructive outlet for public concerns,” she said during a webinar hosted by utility transmission group WIRES. “We've seen a lot of what I consider more disruptive activities around when the public becomes concerned about energy or infrastructure.”

Katz also said questions remain around whether the office would provide intervenor funding — a program that would cover expenses for lower-budget groups to participate in FERC proceedings. FERC commissioners would have to approve such a mechanism, and there remains a lot of questions around how that program would be funded if it were to be adopted, she said. “To me, it's more about is this a good idea, is there a workable model? And then if there is, is there money to pay for it?” READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico Pro/E&E News: The director of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office questioned the country's ability to build out its transmission infrastructure in time to meet President Joe Biden's goal of producing 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 — calling for an "an honest conversation" about the clean energy transition.

Jigar Shar pointed to research Wednesday that says the United States will need to rapidly expand its transmission systems to reach decarbonization targets or expand nuclear power.

“The only thing harder to build than nuclear in this country is transmission,” Shah said during an energy storage policy forum hosted by the American Clean Power Association on Wednesday. "We're not going to 3 to 5x transmission in this country. I don't understand who in this room actually thinks that's going to happen by 2035. The lines that we're building right now were started 12 years ago."

Context: Shah, a former clean energy entrepreneur and founder of SunEdison, said the clean energy industry has “grown up,” which has meant a new responsibility to answer the “tough questions” about the energy transition as the U.S. aims to decarbonize the power system by 2035. READ MORE

Excerpt from EurActiv: Jean-Bernard Lévy, the chairman and CEO of French utility EDF and current president of power industry association Eurelectric, has urged EU countries to invest in distribution grids in order to sustain Europe’s move towards climate neutrality.

“We consider that between now and 2030, about €400 billion of investments are needed in distribution grids,” Lévy said during the Eurelectric Power Summit last Wednesday (15 June).

Alongside this, Lévy called for easier access to EU funds and faster permitting procedures to speed up construction of new power lines.

“It’s not all about solar farms and wind energy,” he added, “it is also about transmission and distribution.”

...

However, Eurelectric President Lévy highlighted the need to maximise hydrogen production within Europe in order to avoid depending on foreign suppliers.

“This would still be an H2 dependency,” he warned.

“We could agree that it could be quite risky that in 20 years, all of a sudden, we discover that there is a problem in one of the countries which is so important for the supply [of hydrogen]. All of a sudden we find ourselves in the same situation as what has happened when Russia invaded Ukraine,” he added. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News/Politico Pro: Emissions modeling comes with caveats and limitations. Here's one: It can take more than a decade to build an interstate transmission line to connect renewable energy generation to major metropolitan areas. Yet most models assume many of these projects will be built by 2030.

In other words, emissions models can understate just how difficult it will be to rapidly reduce emissions this decade. Modelers themselves are generally open about that fact. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News Greenwire: The federal review of a key transmission line to connect commercial-scale solar projects in Nevada to millions of households has been delayed by months over concerns about a likely route across a national monument designed to protect thousands of ice age fossils.

The 470-mile-long Greenlink West transmission line would stretch along Nevada’s western boundary, from Las Vegas north to Reno, carrying as much as 4,000 megawatts of mostly renewable electricity from dozens of proposed solar projects in the state.

The Bureau of Land Management last spring began an environmental impact statement (EIS) analyzing the proposal by NV Energy that has already sparked a flurry of solar project applications along its presumed path. The Greenlink West project is a priority for the Biden administration as it works to expand the power grid to support green energy projects often located in remote areas.

...

But the draft environmental review originally set to be released for public comment in January has been delayed, likely until May, due to NV Energy's proposal to place the line across 1.5 miles of the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, according to a senior Interior Department official with knowledge of the situation who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

BLM is leaning toward making the proposed route across the monument its "preferred alternative" in the draft EIS, advancing plans to place as many as 12 power-line poles within the monument managed by the National Park Service, the official said. The line would run 5 feet inside the monument near the road that splits the north and south units of the 22,650-acre monument, which was established by Congress in 2014 to protect the fossils of long-extinct species like the Columbian mammoth and the sabertooth cat.

Conservation groups are already raising alarms about the possibility of the power line disturbing fossils, saying the federal government should prioritize preservation along with energy transmission. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico Pro: A federal appeals court has paved the way for utilities to finish the final mile of a contested Midwest transmission line through the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed last week a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking completion of the 101-mile Cardinal-Hickory Creek line, which would run from Iowa to Wisconsin. The injunction prohibited developers from acquiring a needed easement through the refuge and the Mississippi River in a land exchange with the federal government.

The two-page order could be a final act in a legal saga as utilities indicated they will seek to complete the land swap Thursday. They also previously signaled a desire to begin work on the final segment of the project — which is in western Wisconsin — as soon as possible.

Three conservation groups seeking to block the line haven’t given up, however. They filed a request Wednesday with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin to renew the preliminary injunction and buy time while the court weighs in on the case. READ MORE