March 18, 2009—Wind-generated electricity from the upper Midwest will become cost-competitive with power generated from more conventional fuel sources like coal, while providing substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions when connected to the nation’s electricity grid via new extra-high voltage transmission lines, a new study by The Brattle Group has concluded.
The study, “Transmission Super Highway: Benefits of Extra High Voltage Transmission Overlays,” provides some of the most significant evidence to date that renewable resources offer an important and economically-feasible means to respond to escalating energy demands in a carbon-regulated environment with domestic energy sources. The study was commissioned by ITC Holdings Corp.
The study concludes that extra-high voltage transmission projects like ITC’s proposed Green Power Express are essential for accessing the nation’s most important renewable energy resources.
The Green Power Express transmission project will traverse portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana and will ultimately include approximately 3,000 miles of extra high-voltage (765 kilovolt) transmission. The entire project is currently estimated to cost approximately $10-12 billion and could result in the efficient movement of up to 12,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power from the upper Midwest states to load centers in the Midwest and ultimately to the East Coast and eliminate up to 280 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over a 10-year period, the Brattle study concluded.
