Transmission development is critical to the energy transition. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that the U.S. will need 47,000 gigawatt miles of new transmission in 10 years to keep up with clean energy deployment, electrification, and load growth. But siting and permitting challenges have stifled transmission development efforts in recent years.
Minnesota aims to unlock the state’s transmission potential by opening all state and interstate highway corridors for the co-location of high-voltage transmission infrastructure.
“This is an exciting and important step in speeding the development of absolutely essential infrastructure for delivering clean energy and helping the country ensure grid reliability and resiliency,” said Randy Satterfield, executive director of the NextGen Highways coalition. “Knocking down state-level policy barriers like this one in Minnesota is exactly the kind of progress our state coalition push is intended to achieve.”
NextGen Highways has developed a diverse national coalition advancing the concept of co-location of utility and telecommunication infrastructure in existing public right-of-way (ROW) corridors with policymakers and others and is now building state-level coalitions.
The coalitions advocate for ROWs to be considered for new electric transmission infrastructure to meet the growing demand from decarbonization policies, electric vehicles, and building electrification. Part of that effort includes identifying barriers to co-location and strategies to overcome those barriers.
The Minnesota legislation amends existing state law to explicitly allow for the co-location of new high-voltage electric transmission in all existing Minnesota state and interstate highway corridors, ending a decades-long state agency policy prohibiting utility infrastructure from being located in interstate and other controlled-access highway ROW.
The NextGen Highways Minnesota coalition will now turn its attention to convening and collaborating with state agencies and Minnesota utilities building transmission to consider existing infrastructure corridors for future transmission development, including the MISO long-range transmission planning process.
