JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - A Houston-based company is asking Missouri utility regulators to reconsider their rejection of a proposed high-voltage power line that was planned for a multistate wind energy project.
Clean Line Energy Partners wants the Missouri Public Service Commission to rehear its application to build a $2.2 billion transmission line to carry Kansas wind power across Missouri to eastern power grids, the Kansas City Star reported.
The company says Missouri officials made multiple errors and did not act in an "even-handed" way when the commission on July 1 denied the request to build the Grain Belt Express.
"The project is too important to Missouri's energy future not to pursue," Clean Line Energy officials told the Star, adding the state's ruling also deprived the rest of country of low-cost, clean energy.
Three of the panel's five members voted that Clean Line Energy failed to prove a need for the project, and they questioned whether the project was economically feasible and whether it would have promoted public interests. Commissioners also wondered whether the project was needed to meet state renewable energy standards requiring that utilities get 15 percent of energy from renewable resources by 2021. Three of four Missouri public utility companies already are set to meet that mark.
The project was backed by business groups, labor unions and environmentalists but opposed by farmers in the path that stretched from western Missouri's Buchanan County to Ralls County on the east side of the state. Landowners opposed to the project warned it would hurt farming and reduce property values where the power line was planned to be constructed.
The Grain Belt Express would transmit electricity from Dodge City, Kansas, across northern Missouri and Illinois to a substation in Sullivan, Indiana. Some of the electricity would be available for Missouri utilities.
About 530 Missouri landowners are in the path of the proposed line, which would cross the Missouri River south of St. Joseph and cut east across eight mostly rural counties before crossing the Mississippi River south of Hannibal.