The Department of Energy rolled into Lamar last week and Office of Electricity Assistant Secretary Katie Jereza stood in her neat, green suit in front of a room filled with farmers, ranchers and landowners. The crowd was filled with straw cowboy hats, sweat-stained ball caps, tee shirts and button-down chambray shirts that had seen more than a full day’s work in a summer marked by drought and heat. In Lamar, cows are grazing the weeds on what last year were alfalfa fields. Typically, a cowman wouldn’t graze alfalfa for fear of bloated cows, but this year there’s little threat of that. The tide is low this year on the great sagebrush sea.

Jereza was there to tell the gathered crowd the NIETC, the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor, an area encompassing about 2 million acres or 24% of the state of New Mexico plus an area in southeastern Colorado ranging from five to 15 miles wide across Prowers, Baca and Kiowa counties — is dead. All told, the affected areas contribute $1.9 billion in New Mexico annually and another $504 million annually in the three affected Colorado counties just from agriculture production. I’ve written about this ad nauseam for a couple different reasons.

This giant swath the NIETC projects would have gobbled up is ranchland, farm ground and wildlife habitat, including that used by black-footed ferrets and Lesser Prairie Chickens. All of these types of working lands are valuable. Those who look out across southeastern Colorado and see nothing but empty ground are missing the proverbial boat. You can prefer transmission lines, wind turbines, subdivisions and a shopping mecca all designed around a drive-thru chicken joint and a Target; but that doesn’t discount the value of empty country.

“Today, the DOE is announcing that we do not plan to move forward with designating the three proposed national interest electric transmission corridors or NIETC,” she announced.

The applause brought tears to my eyes. For just a few seconds, rural Colorado and agriculture won one.

Jereza said widespread support for the project was lacking and that the robust stakeholder process once promised by the Biden administration was much less than that. She said the process created uncertainty rather than confidence. She said it wasn’t just agriculture stakeholders and groups that voiced their objections. Conservation groups, too, were opposed to the project and the lack of local planning.

A 2005 bill granted the Department of Energy the power to use eminent domain to establish corridors to bring high-voltage transmission lines to areas suffering from a lack of access to power. The DOE attempted to exercise this power twice, once on each coast, but was thwarted by the courts.

In 2021, the Biden administration announced via executive order their intention to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The same year, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 amended the Federal Power Act (FPA) granting the Department of Energy broad discretion to establish NIETCs so the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can permit interstate electric transmission facilities.

The DOE said the law didn’t limit the shape, proportion or size of the corridor and there is the opportunity for public-private cooperative projects within the NIETC so there’s no guardrails on potential projects within the exceedingly wide swath.

Jereza said all of this reminded her and the DOE of the deep connection between communities and their land, be it a privately owned ranch, tribal land, habitat or open spaces and this underscored the importance of a stakeholder process.

She said federal intervention for NIETCs must be reserved for circumstances that clearly serve the national interest and where the need for that intervention is supported by the facts.

“Additionally, there was a lack of expressed interest from developers interested in seeking federal backstop authority through the NIETC process,” she said. “Developers generally indicated a preference for working with state and local permitting frameworks, highlighting the importance of approaches that are responsive to local needs and priorities. As we look ahead, we recognize the importance of considering the full range of tools available to address transmission constraints and congestion, such as advanced transmission technologies, grid-enhancing technologies and new generation resources.”

She said announcements of projects funded by SPARK, Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades, will be announced in the coming weeks. The $1.9 billion is earmarked to accelerate urgently needed upgrades to the nation’s power grid and reduce consumer energy costs.

According to the DOE, the SPARK opportunity builds on the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program, which provided up to $10.5 billion in competitive funding over five years to states, tribes, electric utilities and other eligible recipients to strengthen grid resilience and innovation. The previous two GRIP funding rounds covered fiscal year 2022-2023 and fiscal year 2023-2024 funding. Today’s announcement continues the mission of the GRIP Program under the SPARK funding opportunity, focusing on the rapid deployment of reconductoring and other ATTs that expand transfer capability, strengthen reliability and resource adequacy and reduce costs for consumers, all while making use of existing rights of way.

The cancellation encompasses the Southwestern Grid Corridor, including parts of Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma; the Lake Erie/Canada Corridor, covering parts of Lake Erie and Pennsylvania; and the Tribal Energy Access Corridor, covering parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska and five tribal reservations. We won one. Now we need rain.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication.