posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 9:13 AM by Andrea Kells

DOE Proposes Two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors

Several months after FERC's issuance of a final rule setting out the procedures it will follow to determine whether to site transmission facilities in Department of Energy (DOE)-designated national interest electric transmission (NIET) corridors, DOE has proposed two NIET corridors for review and comment.  The "Mid-Atlantic Area National Corridor" encompasses certain counties in Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and all of New Jersey, Delaware and the District of Columbia.  The "Southwest Area National Corridor" includes counties in California, Arizona, and Nevada.  Public comments on the proposed designations may be filed with the DOE within sixty days of the proposal's publication in the Federal Register.  Final designation is expected by the end of the year, possibly accompanied or closely followed by more draft designations of corridors in the areas of New England, San Francisco and Seattle-Portland, areas that DOE is also considering for NIET corridor designation. 

Final designation of these two NIET corridors would pave the way for FERC to utilize the so-called “backstop” siting authority that Congress granted to the agency in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005).  In an amendment to the Federal Power Act, EPAct 2005 empowered FERC to issue permits for construction of transmission lines and condemn right of way for those transmission lines.  Until now, only state regulators and siting authorities possessed this authority. 

Final designation would also raise the chances that several transmission operators, whose 2006 requests for "early" NIET corridor designation were rejected by DOE, would see their proposed projects come closer to fruition.  Those projects include AEP's proposed Mountaineer Project from West Virginia to New Jersey, Allegheny Power's Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line Project from Pennsylvania to West Virginia, and SDG&E's Imperial Valley project in southern California.