The US’s new economic stimulus plan is providing billions of dollars towards the doubling of the nation’s supply of renewable energy; environmentalist groups, however, are opposing the plan to build new transmission lines intended to carry this 
renewable energy.

Thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines are being planned to move power from the Great Plains spanning central America and south-eastern California’s Mojhave Desert to the nations’ energy hungry cities.

Environmentalist group Industrial Wind Action executive director Lisa Linowes says that by establishing new transmission lines, the US is needlessly industrialising the
remote American landscape at the expense of its local residents.

Power companies stand to profit greatly 
when a new transmission line is erected. Environmentalists are arguing that these power companies are using the pretext of renewable energy for the setting up of new power lines.

Meanwhile, the US Congress is considering creating a national renewable-energy standard, legislating that power companies will have to draw a large percentage of its power from renewable sources, such as solar, wind and geothermal.

The passing of such a standard would 
result in the US’s need for new transmission lines increasing even further. Environmental group Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy executive director Jim Harvey says that even though the electricity travelling along the line is green, it does not make the process any less harmful, in that many of the proposed transmission lines would run through sensitive wilderness areas.

The cost of building the transmission lines eventually would become the responsibility of US taxpayers, who would fund 100% of transmission line infrastructure.

He adds: “This money can be invested into renewable technologies that are actually green. The 
solution is point-of-use generation.”

Point-of-use generation or distributed generation, as it is more commonly known, is supported by many environmental groups. These groups argue that solar energy does not need to be sourced from the remote Mojhave Desert regions and transmitted to cities, such as Los Angeles and San Diego. Instead, the solar energy should be sourced closer to where it will be used.

Electricity utility company Southern California Edison is developing a 250-MW project to install solar panels on 150 commercial buildings, totalling 65-million square feet of solar cells in southern California. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will install 400 MWof solar panels on city roof tops, parking lots and reservoirs, by 2014.

By using power directly from its source and by tapping into existing transmission infrastructure, the need for thousands of kilometres of transmission lines is reduced.
However, the building of transmission lines remains profitable for power companies, says Harvey. 
The financing for new transmission lines includes a guaranteed 11% to 12% 
yearly profit for the next 40 years for the power companies.

Freelance engineer Bill Powers says that this creates a huge incentive for power companies to build new transmission lines to distribute power.

Environmentalists, including the Centre for Biological Diversity biologist Ileene Anderson, fear that power companies will use renewable energy as an excuse to build many new transmission lines that will be used to predominantly carry coal energy.

Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs secretary Ian Bowles told The New York Times that renewable-energy resources 
are found all over the country, and that they do not need to be harnessed from just one place.

An example is the CapX 2020 project, which is a proposed cluster of new power lines to link Minnesota with proposed wind farms in North and South Dakota. This project was put on hold after studies indicated that Minnesota could instead develop many small 10-MW to 40-MW wind farms that would generate a total of 600 MW.

San Diego-based energy journalist Craig Rose points out that this is equivalent to a modern power plant, that did not require that transmission lines be built.

Many environmentalists, including Rose, believe that big power companies fear 
advances in roof-top solar technology, as it has the potential of transforming building owners into power generators, which transfers the responsibility of generating power from State utilities or private companies, to the consumer.