How States Can Lead on Transmission to Power Economic Growth

Contributed by RNW Staff

In our blog, Why You Should Care About Transmission, we explored why transmission is essential for clean energy and a reliable grid. Today, we focus on the next step: building it.

The Northwest has abundant wind, solar, and other clean energy resources ready to fuel our economy and power communities. But a critical challenge is standing in the way of energy growth and economic opportunity is transmission.

Without new lines and expanding capacity, clean energy projects stall, communities lose jobs and revenue, and our region’s ability to attract industry and investment is limited. Understanding the hurdles to building transmission, and how states can step in to solve them, is key to unlocking the Northwest’s energy and economic potential.

First, let’s dive into the hurdles and why transmission isn’t getting built.

High Costs and Long Timelines: Transmission projects can cost billions of dollars and often take 10–20 years to construct, if not longer. In the Northwest, the main public power agency, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) has historically based its transmission planning on customer requests for interconnections rather than proactively identifying the grid’s long-term needs. This approach has created delays: BPA typically builds new lines only when there are enough customers to cover the cost, leaving projects in limbo even when utilities see them as essential for business or reliability. While BPA is currently transitioning to a proactive model for transmission planning, there is currently no set timeline for completing that transition, leaving both planning efforts and requested projects awaiting analysis and response. RNW is actively engaging in that proceeding and is optimistic about the direction BPA is headed.

Disaggregating utility plans can also be difficult. For example, Portland General Electric’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) includes transmission projects, but it’s not always clear which are BPA-led or utility-led. Standardization of the ways that transmission assets appear in various utility resource planning is necessary for a holistic understanding of how transmission development can benefit our region. Meanwhile, regional upgrades often require additional studies before moving forward. 

Fragmented Responsibilities: Large transmission projects are inherently risky, especially when they cross multiple states. Utilities face complex questions: how do you charge Oregon customers for a line that also benefits Montana? How do you allocate the costs for reliability benefits versus energy delivery? While some multi-state utilities can spread costs across jurisdictions, other utilities are limited to local ratepayers, making regional projects harder to finance. This fragmented responsibility often places upward pressure on customer rates, creating political and regulatory challenges for utilities and leaving critical projects on hold.

Permitting and Siting: Transmission permitting is one of the most complicated aspects of project development. While environmental review processes exist (like NEPA), there is no single coordinating body across jurisdictions. Lines that cross multiple local, tribal, and state jurisdictions can face years of overlapping reviews and disputes.

Currently, there’s no state-level entity analyzing statewide transmission needs or prioritizing which projects should move forward, leaving gaps in planning and coordination that slow development and increase costs.

How the State Can Play a Role

Historically, transmission planning and permitting have been left to federal agencies and utilities. But as projects grow in size, complexity, and regional significance, states have a unique opportunity to act as conveners, financiers, and facilitators. By stepping into this role, states can ensure that transmission investments align with long-term economic growth and energy reliability. 

Tools the state can leverage include:

Finance: States can provide creative capital solutions and financing tools that lower costs and reduce risk for ratepayers. By offering favorable loan terms or guarantees, states can make projects feasible that utilities or BPA alone might avoid due to financial risk. For example, the Idaho Energy Resources Authority has used state-backed financing to get multistate transmission projects off the ground — an approach Oregon and Washington could replicate.

Planning: The region lacks an entity focused on statewide transmission needs to analyze regional studies and apply a state-specific perspective. This includes prioritizing projects that matter most to the state over multi-year timelines, and helping “connect the dots” between regional planning and local priorities. States can also serve as convening bodies — leveraging stakeholder engagement and public diplomacy to resolve disputes, share information, and build consensus for critical projects.

Permitting and Coordination: States can serve as central nodes for coordinating complex permitting reviews, resolving disputes, and facilitating cross-jurisdictional collaboration.
This includes overseeing environmental assessments, streamlining processes, and troubleshooting challenges that would otherwise stall multi-state projects.

Cost Allocation and Benefit Assessment: States can help define how transmission benefits are quantified (energy delivery, grid reliability, economic growth) and how costs are allocated to customers fairly. For example, reliability may account for 20–50% of a project’s benefit, guiding how costs are split across jurisdictions. By creating transparent methodologies, states can reduce disputes and ensure that projects with the greatest net benefit move forward. However, issues related to transmission cost allocation are still being worked out in a variety of settings, such as those implementing FERC’s Order 1920.

Transmission as Economic Infrastructure

Transmission is the missing link between clean energy potential and real economic growth. Without it, new projects stall, communities lose economic opportunity, and the clean energy transition slows.

States have both the authority and the incentive to lead: through strategic financing, planning, permitting coordination, and fair cost allocation. By taking a proactive role, states can ensure that critical transmission projects get off the ground, powering a thriving economy and a cleaner, more resilient energy future.

The time to act is now. Building new transmission means economic growth, resilience, and opportunity for the Northwest. In our next blog, we’ll explore specific ways states can take a more active role in shaping their transmission and energy future through the use of transmission authorities.