By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. farmers on Tuesday slammed a project that got an up-to $4.9 billion loan guarantee from former President Joe Biden’s administration to transmit electricity from wind and solar farms in the Midwest to cities.
The 800-mile (1,290 km) Grain Belt Express transmission project backed by private company Invenergy would transmit power from Kansas to cities in the Midwest and East.
Invenergy says the line, the second-longest in U.S. history, would be a national “energy security backbone” connecting four grid regions including the PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. grid, which covers states from Illinois to New Jersey.
The project could also support President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” policy of maximizing energy output. The White House on May 9 praised a $1.7 billion Invenergy investment in the project in a “list of wins” that bolster the U.S. economy and enhance national security.
But Garrett Hawkins, the president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told Reuters that the project would trample on the rights of farmers due to the project filing dozens of eminent domain, or compulsory acquisition, petitions against state landowners.
Hawkins said the “sole purpose is to serve its own business interests, and in doing so, profit off the backs of farmers and landowners who have to house their infrastructure for decades to come.”
His comments came after Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said in a post on X on July 10 that he had a conversation with Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Wright had told him that “he will be putting a stop to the Grain Belt Express green scam.”
Invenergy said it sent a letter to Wright a day later saying Hawley and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who has opened an investigation into the project, are declaring “open season on America’s ability to build needed energy infrastructure.” Invenergy asked Wright to “put this unfounded noise aside and affirm a commitment” to the line.
The White House and the Department of Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The project has been in the works for a decade and got the conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office in November last year.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; additional reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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