Earth Equity News

Plans to Expand Transmission Corridors Said to Disfavor Clean Energy. By Judy Pasternak, LATimes, March 31, 2008. "There is wide agreement that the nation needs to upgrade the aging system that delivers electricity from power plants to consumers -- a grid that already is overtaxed and facing a 43% increase in demand over the next two decades. But opposition is growing to the way the Bush administration [is going about it]... The 2005 energy act gave the Energy Department the right to designate national-interest electric transmission corridors, where the federal government can step in to permit transmission towers and wires that have been rejected or delayed by states. In these corridors, the federal government can condemn private land along a power-line route... Transmission of electricity is critically congested at the core of each zone, the Energy Department says... But critics say the zones are too large and were drawn to favor power from plants that run on fossil fuels instead of… wind, solar, and heat from the Earth's interior, which also would need transmission if they were to be part of the energy mix. The chosen contours of this plan, they say, will exacerbate global warming and pollution."