SALT LAKE CITY — Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced Tuesday a new initiative pushing the development of renewable energy resources in the West, including the federal stamp of approval on two major transmission lines impacting Utah.
Those transmission lines, years in the review process, will distribute up to 4,500 megawatts of renewable power across the Mountain West, Desert Southwest and California.
The TransWest Express Project is a high-voltage, direct current electric transmission system that will deliver wind energy from Wyoming along a 730-mile route with potential grid interconnections in California, Nevada and Arizona.
About 60 percent of its route — which crosses Utah — impacts Bureau of Land Management land and follows previously established utility corridors where possible.
The project, which will take three years to build, adds 3,000 megawatts of "backbone" transmission capacity between the Desert Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, or enough energy to power 1.8 million homes.
"The western U.S. needs new interregional transmission infrastructure like the TWE project, which will allow California and other Desert Southwest utilities to directly access high-capacity Wyoming wind to balance and diversify their generation portfolios in a cost-effective manner," said Bill Miller, president and CEO of TransWest, which is an independent transmission developer.
The Interior Department also gave final federal approval to the 416-mile Energy Gateway South project, a transmission line that will cross public lands administered by the BLM in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.
"Together, these initiatives will generate thousands of construction jobs, cut carbon emissions by millions of tons and help Western states meet their renewable energy goals," Jewell said.
The Wilderness Society's Alex Daue called the approved routes for the transmission lines "extremely disappointing, multistate missed opportunities."
"The routes unnecessarily destroy wilderness-quality lands in northwest Colorado and eastern Nevada, as well as greater sage-grouse habitat. Readily available alternative routes could have minimized or eliminated these impacts by following highways and designated utility corridors," said Daue, the organization's assistant director for energy and climate.
TransWest Express filed for a right of way application in 2008, kicking off an exhaustive review process that involved collaboration among 50 federal, state and local cooperating agencies.
Gateway South, a project of PacifiCorp, also begins in Wyoming and ends at the Clover substation near Mona, Juab County. It will carry up to 1,500 megawatts of renewable power.
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