Unlocking the Grid’s Full Potential for People and Wildlife

Electricity allows our communities to function; clean electricity allows our communities to thrive. Shifting the electric grid from fossil-based to healthier forms will require a massive coordinated effort that prioritizes a modern, resilient grid, and energy transmission. What exactly is transmission? Simply put, transmission moves energy. Renewable energy projects like wind and solar create the energy. Power lines and transmission towers then move that energy to the areas that need it. Building renewable and cleaner forms of energy generation means nothing if we do not have sufficient transmission infrastructure to carry it from its source to homes and businesses.

To protect our environment for future generations and provide affordable and reliable energy to our communities, electric transmission capacity must more than double within this decade. This infrastructure development must be resilient and reliable in the face of increasing severe weather events and will have significant, potential impacts on our lands, wildlife, cultural resources, and more.

The National Wildlife Federation is committed to ensuring that the values and perspectives of varied local communities, and the well-being of wildlife and our natural environment are central to accelerating America’s clean grid buildout.

Clean Energy Transmission Policy Platform

To ensure everyone in the country has access to reliable, clean, and affordable electricity, we will need to roughly triple transmission capacity over the next two decades. The National Wildlife Federation’s transmission policy platform makes recommendations for how we can swiftly increase grid capacity while minimizing impacts on people and wildlife. Recommendations include:

• Avoiding wildlife impacts: Developers of new high-capacity transmission lines should strive to avoid key sites for wildlife, such as key migration routes. Federal and state agencies should work together to identify these sensitive habitats and to fund more research into ways to reduce wildlife impacts.
• Creating local benefits: The developers of new high-capacity power lines should take steps to ensure that these lines don’t compound the harm to historically disadvantaged groups that are already disproportionately exposed to fossil fuel pollution. These developers should engage with communities affected by proposed lines earlier and more frequently than the legal minimums in the National Environmental Policy Act so they can design projects that benefit communities, for example by including employment guarantees or use co-ownership models. Developers should engage Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations according to the principles of free, prior and informed consent.
• Using the least harmful locations: Federal, state, and Tribal governments and communities should work together to proactively identify the least harmful locations for new lines — places like former mines, industrial sites and oil and gas fields, as well as existing rights-of-way for transportation and transmission.
• Improving existing lines: There are a large and growing suite of technological solutions that can expand the capacity and increase the stability of existing lines – but these solutions remain woefully underutilized. Another option, called “reconductoring,” would essentially rewire existing transmission corridors with higher-capacity cables that also can stand up better to extreme storms. Applying these technologies to existing structures first can help inform the buildout process.

Transmission Priorities for Federal Permitting Reform

Federal permitting reform is a key opportunity to expand and modernize the grid by improving agency coordination, streamlining reviews, and ensuring projects are sited responsibly. NWF supports a permitting framework that delivers reliable, affordable energy while protecting the nation’s lands, waters, wildlife, and communities.

NWF recommends that Congress include ten key transmission provisions in federal legislation on permitting in order to ensure a modern and reliable electric grid able to support new load growth.