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America’s Largest
Wind Farm Is Finally Moving Forward
by
By Haley
Zaremba
May 10, 2023
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The largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere,
which was initially proposed back in 2008, is now ready to begin
construction and is expected to come online in 2026.
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The SunZia project stretches across three
counties in New Mexico and will be able to supply energy to consumers
in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
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The major delays to the project are largely due
to the permitting and approval process for power lines and grids that
cross through more than one state.
The largest wind project in the Western Hemisphere is finally ready to
begin construction. After nearly two decades on the drawing board, the
3,500-megawatt (MW) wind farm will break ground on a sprawling
territory across New Mexico’s counties of Torrance, Lincoln, and San
Miguel. When completed, the wind farm will be able to supply energy to
consumers in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The project is
expected to come online in 2026 – nearly 20 years after it was
initially proposed.
The SunZia project’s California-based renewable energy developer
Pattern Energy Group says that it will “power the needs of more than 3
million Americans.” And, according to reporting by
Electrek, “it is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs, [and] has an
expected economic impact of $20.5 billion.” Pattern has already
invested upwards of $5 billion into the project.
The project is split into two main branches: the wind farm itself, and
the considerable transportation infrastructure that will be needed to
transport that energy to its end users. As with most
other massive-scale renewable energy projects,
finding available land tracts big enough to house such enormous
constructions requires traveling pretty far from the urban centers
that represent the lion's share of the demand for all of that energy.
All told SunZia Transmission will be a 550-mile ± 525 kV high-voltage
direct current (HVDC) transmission line capable of transporting 3,000
MW of clean energy, spanning between central New Mexico, where the
wind power will be produced, and south-central Arizona, where much of
it will be consumed.
The reason that the project has taken so long has less to do with the
SunZia Wind arm of the project, and more to do with the SunZia
Transmission arm. The permitting and approval process for power lines
and grids that cross through more than one state is notoriously
difficult and inefficient. A recent New York Times op-ed referred
to it as a “byzantine approval process that typically includes
separate reviews by every municipality and state through which a power
line will pass, as well as a host of federal agencies.”
In fact, the bloated timeline associated with SunZia is not an
outlier. Instead, it is representative of a global problem with the
current state of the renewable energy industry. A recent
analysis from
McKinsey identified difficult regulatory processes as one of three
major challenges for the development of clean energy, along with
finding sufficient and affordable land and an aging, over-congested,
and unprepared power grid.
Then, once the plans for such a project are finally approved, it is
often hit with litigation, further delaying the process. This is often
a symptom of land-use competition, as well as anti-renewable sentiment
and NIMBYism in the rural areas where these projects are invariably
developed. “Over the past year, solar projects in Ohio, Kentucky,
and Nevada have
all been delayed or sunk by irked local people,” the Guardian recently
reported. There has also been backlash at the local and state
government levels, with measures restricting renewable energy
facilities passed in
31 states.
All things considered, SunZia finally breaking ground is a monumental
accomplishment. But the fact that it is developing added power
production capacity hand-in-hand with added power lines and grid
connectivity is an even bigger accomplishment. Insufficient
infrastructure is one of the greatest challenges facing
decarbonization in the United States. Increasingly, when renewable
energy projects are finally ready to come online, they find that there
is not a reliable grid to plug into. SunZia shows promise as a good
model going forward, but a 20-year timeline isn’t going to cut it. The
project should then also be viewed as a warning: if the U.S. wants to
meet its climate goals, it has to seriously rethink and streamline its
regulatory policies.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
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