Jul 02, 2025
power lines
Grain Belt Express is a test of America’s will to build
by Invenergy
American strength and security depends on winning global races in artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced manufacturing, while ensuring affordable, reliable power for communities. Doing so requires meeting surging electricity demand and securing grid reliability – which requires building new, immediate, large-scale physical infrastructure.
The uncomfortable question today is: has America lost its will to build?
Invenergy’s Grain Belt Express transmission line is a critical project for American grid security. In Missouri, a spurious and obviously politically motivated investigation has been launched with the express purpose of blocking the project from ever getting built, by way of rolling back a state regulatory approval already granted by the Missouri Public Service Commission and sustained on Missouri Supreme Court-reviewed appeal. It is the kind of last-ditch political attempt to delay project construction that unfortunately has become a hallmark of America’s infrastructure quagmire.
Grain Belt Express is the largest, most ambitious transmission project in U.S. history. It is an 800-mile power pipeline capable of delivering four nuclear power plants’ worth of electricity. As an open-access line, it will carry a diverse mix of energy based on customer demand and available market power. By connecting four U.S. grid regions, Grain Belt Express will deliver cost savings and strengthen reliability for 29 states and D.C., more than 40% of Americans, and 25% of Department of Defense installations.
Just as we need more energy, it is getting harder and harder to build the transmission needed to deliver it. According to Grid Strategies, construction of U.S. high-voltage transmission (345 kilovolts and greater) has steadily declined starting from about 1,700 miles in the early 2010s, to 925 miles from 2015-2019, to only 350 miles between 2020 and 2023.
Regulatory burdens are part of the story. Political opposition is another.
States lead the transmission project permitting process. Grain Belt Express has gone through Public Utility Commission reviews in four separate states—Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. Arguably, no power infrastructure project has been more widely reviewed. All four route states approved the project after extensive regulatory reviews. The substantial energy cost savings, reliability enhancement, national security benefits, job creation, and other benefits the project will deliver were established using widely accepted utility industry methodologies. Commissioners and parties in these proceedings cross examined Grain Belt Express expert witnesses. After approval, the Missouri commission strongly defended its Order before multiple state courts on an appeal brought by project opponents, who lost.
The state approvals were secured even before the current experience of major increases in energy demand, making Grain Belt Express’s energy, reliability, and savings benefits even greater today than when the state commissions approved it.
Responsible transmission developers respect private property rights and make every effort to negotiate with landowners. Grain Belt Express has among the strongest set of landowner protections and compensation packages, including a Code of Conduct and Agricultural Impact Mitigation Protocol. In fact, the Kansas Farm Bureau called for these protocols to be made a standard for the industry. Today, Grain Belt Express has completed over 95% of land acquisition for Phase 1 (the segment connecting Missouri and Kansas). Living up to our commitment that eminent domain be used only as an absolute last resort, land has been secured through voluntary agreements in all but a low single digit percentage of cases, a rate equal to or better than the utility industry standard.
Importantly, stakeholder input can meaningfully improve projects. After acquiring Grain Belt Express during President Trump’s first term, Invenergy responded to its new community stakeholders by investing significantly in a redesign to make up to half the power available for delivery to Missouri. Previously, Missouri would have had access to only a small share of power delivery. Grain Belt Express listened to local stakeholder concerns and responded. This is how the process should work.
But the process can also be abused. And that’s what’s happening today with political actors making last-gasp attempts to reopen existing state approvals or halt a years-long federal review in its tracks.
If projects can’t count on certainty even after being approved and reviewed upon appeal, America can’t count on ever getting steel in the ground. America will lose the test of its will to build.
For Grain Belt Express, the stakes are real for thousands of American workers, businesses, and communities. The project has already signed agreements tied to contractually guaranteed energy cost savings for municipal utilities serving 39 Missouri communities; a recently completed factory expansion in Pennsylvania; payments due to landowners and county governments starting at construction; and $1.7 billion in U.S. construction contractor deals the White House has touted as a “win” for America.
Grain Belt Express is supported by a broad coalition of energy consumers, municipal utilities, local economic development leaders, manufacturers, laborers, and other groups. Read more about why this is a critical project America must build at: www.GrainBeltExpress.com/Strengthening-America.
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