Senate Bill 108 will make it more difficult for an entity from outside Louisiana to expropriate land for transmission infrastructure that would move electrical power across Louisiana unless “a majority” of the electricity or steam power it transmits would come to Louisiana. It would also empower utilities like Entergy to block competing projects from going forward in the state.
In the context of transmission, this usually means acquisition of private land for the purposes of building transmission lines. And to be clear, when expropriation is used – whether by the government or by certain businesses – all attempts at negotiating a settlement or agreement must be exhausted, any affected landowners must be compensated for the market value of their land, and the purpose of the expropriation must be found by a court to truly serve a public use. That means expropriation cannot be used unless there are clear benefits of a project to everyone, not just the government or a company seeking to use expropriation powers.
This is not a new problem, and in fact is the reason we joined MISO to begin with. MISO is a regional transmission operator whose job is to manage the flow of electricity across 15 states and ensure that consumers get the cheapest electricity possible when and where we need it. Currently the lowest cost power being generated in the US is wind and solar, although Louisiana is far behind the average in the development of these resources. There are barriers to that cheap energy benefitting Louisiana customers, largely due to policies and slow-moving planning for better transmission.
Entergy’s stranglehold on the transmission system in the region has resulted in millions of dollars in unnecessarily high costs to customers. A recent study shows that in 2022, had Entergy Louisiana & Arkansas been properly connected to the MISO grid, customers could have saved $930 million. Entergy was able to overcharge their customers in this way because they have been allowed to isolate their customers from more affordable energy offered by their competitors. That’s money out of residents wallets and into Entergy’s shareholder’s pockets.
SB 108 – now Act 164 – will block the building of much needed transmission projects in our state. Currently, there is one project in the pipeline that would be directly affected (and in fact, was directly targeted) by this bill. A company called Pattern Energy has been developing a large high voltage transmission line that would move low-cost wind and solar power from Oklahoma and Texas to MISO connections in Mississippi. This line is called the Southern Spirit and has been in the works for a decade.
Similarly, electricity needs “highways” to travel across states. Transmission lines like Southern Spirit are “highways” for the electricity that ultimately powers our homes and businesses.
Even though there is no current plan to build an offramp (substation) in Louisiana to inject power directly into the grid here, that doesn’t mean Louisiana residents wouldn’t benefit from this project. The fact is, because the plan is to inject that affordable wind power into the Mississippi part of MISO, those electrons would not only make it to Louisiana customers, but the addition of this line would decrease price pressures in the region, also benefiting Louisiana.
This is the kind of regional transmission project that the Department of Energy (DOE) says is needed for managing costs and reliability (the study specifically calls out connections between Texas and the Delta).
Powerful utilities like Entergy see the development of transmission like the Southern Spirit line as competition and a threat to their stranglehold over power generation and transmission in Louisiana. As the legislator who authored and introduced SB108 has stated publicly, the bill targets this Southern Spirit line, and is intended to create a major barrier to this facility’s completion. Entergy’s lobbyists helped to amend and advance the bill to prevent the project – and any future projects – from connecting the region to non-Entergy produced power.
While SB108 was signed into law by Governor Jeff Landry, it’s not too late to advocate for access to more affordable power for Louisiana consumers. Our public service commissioners and state legislators represent you – let them know your thoughts about affordable energy!
