OVERLAND TRAIL RANCH, CARBON COUNTY—The 732-mile high-voltage TransWest Express transmission line that will connect Wyoming wind-generated electricity to the Southwest is an example of President Joe Biden’s “all-hands-on-deck” strategy for clean energy and climate resiliency, according to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
“The Interior Department is moving quickly to meet President Biden’s goal of permitting at least 25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy by 2025,” Haaland told attendees of a groundbreaking event Tuesday as the southern Wyoming wind whipped across a stage. “The project that we are all here to celebrate — the TransWest Express transmission project — is a momentous milestone in our effort to make that goal a reality.”
Though the Obama-Biden administration granted TransWest Express a “rapid response” designation in 2011, the project has relied entirely on private capital, according to the company.
The wind ripped at a row of flags behind a dais where Haaland was joined by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Gov. Mark Gordon and TransWest Express LLC officials who addressed a crowd of more than 100 attendees. U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning spoke at a TransWest Express reception later that day in Rawlins.
Though Gordon and the Interior officials often clash on energy and federal land use policy fronts, they all hailed TransWest Express — as well as the Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind energy project that will energize the line with 3,000 megawatts of power — as vital steps toward boosting clean energy to help address a climate emergency.
“We know that the time to act on climate is now,” Haaland said. “From coastal towns and rural farms to urban centers and tribal communities, climate change poses an existential threat. Not just to our environment, but to our health, our communities and our economic well being.”
“Gathered here,” Gordon said, “we see the first steps that we’re taking to make sure that we take the action that’s absolutely necessary to keep us from climate peril.”
A permitting feat
Both the $3 billion TransWest Express transmission line and the $5 billion Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind energy project are backed by billionaire Phil Anschutz. The Anschutz Corporation owns the sprawling 320,000-acre Overland Trail Ranch in central Carbon County — the site of historic connections for the Pony Express and transcontinental railroad.
The ranch encompasses a large swath of the “checkerboard” — about a 50-50 mix of private and federal lands, according to CCSM developer Power Company of Wyoming. Those lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, along with other BLM, state and private lands along the four-state TransWest Express route, mired the projects in the bureaucracy of state, county and federal permitting. All told the process has spanned more than 15 years.
“Of course, this took way too long to get permitted,” Granholm said. “We all agree in the Biden administration that we need to accelerate these transmission lines. The Department of Interior, the Department of Energy and the White House have been working on a process to accelerate these transmission lines that, of course, still protects our natural environments: our air, our water, our land.”
Haaland noted that both projects were prioritized during the Obama-Biden administration 12 years ago. Although the federal permitting process for such projects must be streamlined to promote clean energy projects quicker, the reformation effort will not bypass a commitment to ensure environmental and human health protections, as well as promoting environmental justice, Haaland said.
“The BLM [in its permitting authority over the projects] was able to avoid impacts to greater sage grouse, to lands with wilderness characteristics and to other natural resources in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nevada,” she said. “Because those are important too.”
Agreeing on climate action
Though entirely financed by private capital and delayed for years, the TransWest Express and CCSM projects fit President Biden’s climate and Investing In America initiatives, according to Interior officials. The CCSM and TransWest Express projects directly address the “impacts of climate change by boosting climate resiliency and replacing aging infrastructure,” Haaland said.
Though he often rails against Biden administration efforts such as slashing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and reasserting conservation as a “multiple-use” priority on federal public lands, Gordon joined the Interior officials in calling for quick and decisive action — through innovation — to address climate change.
“Because there is an urgency as we see climate change, we know that we don’t have time to waste,” Gordon said. “We have to move with diligence forward to make sure that we address the issue of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with alacrity and diligence and with dedication.”
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