By Sarah Moskowitz,
CUB Executive Director
If there’s one thing Chicagoans understand, it’s traffic congestion and how disruptive road closures can be to daily life. Anyone who navigated the construction on the Kennedy Expressway knows how important public infrastructure is for keeping this economy running. (Note: Read the version of this op-ed that appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business.)
Much like a functioning interstate highway system is critical to ensuring Illinoisans avoid costly traffic delays, an efficient electricity transmission system is essential to ensuring access to affordable, reliable power. And, like the highway system, it helps to have multiple routes for those electrons to travel to reach consumers, easily bypassing any route closures that could otherwise result in a power outage.
Planning and building transmission lines through a regional process with other states is the proven way to ensure the delivery of reliable power from the lowest-cost resources across the Midwest. Our state regulators will soon consider six transmission projects slated to cross portions of Illinois that aim to bolster the state’s electricity grid, delivering at least 2.6 times more benefits compared to costs. These lines serve to strengthen what is essentially the region’s electricity highway, increasing competition on the system by connecting consumers to more affordable resources and reducing overall costs on our utility bills.
The Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO) — the grid operator that serves the central and southern parts of the state — approved 18 transmission projects across the region in July 2022 as part of a coordinated, regional long-term planning effort. The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) will consider several of these projects in the coming weeks, with construction hinging on the regulators’ approval. In an exciting development, CUB recently joined with Environmental Defense Fund and Environmental Law & Policy Center to reach a ground-breaking agreement with Ameren Illinois to help improve planning through consideration of cutting-edge grid-enhancing technologies.
Building transmission in a piecemeal, haphazard fashion is more expensive. Well-planned regional lines enable the development of many low-cost clean energy projects in rural Illinois communities seeking to connect to the Midwestern grid. These lines are also important for ensuring Illinois has adequate power to meet growing electricity demand in the coming years. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees the reliability and security of the grid, categorized the region as being at a “high risk” for power supply shortfalls beginning in 2025 during an average summer and winter — with extreme weather events posing an even greater threat. And just like the Kennedy Expressway, upgrading the infrastructure to mitigate these risks won’t happen overnight.
In other words, the region needs to start bringing on more power now to avoid potential risks. And approving these new transmission lines is an important first step in enabling new power plants to connect to the grid and help ensure reliability. 
Illinois ratepayers deserve efficient regional transmission projects that reduce costs and deliver reliability, and significant long-term savings. While transmission isn’t the largest charge on ratepayers’ bills, it is still expensive. That’s why it is imperative that new projects across the region are subject to a rigorous regional planning process as MISO has developed, and state utility regulatory oversight, which will maximize efficiency and reduce overall costs.
It is now up to our state’s utility commissioners to fairly consider the long-term savings and other benefits these lines will provide Illinoisans — and ensure their construction can begin as soon as possible.
While the Kennedy Expressway closure caused traffic headaches for months on end, power outages and high prices are not something Illinoisans can simply bypass. We need to build a stronger highway system for our electricity, one that can better handle future challenges. These regional transmission projects are the most affordable way to power the state for decades to come.
