When the legendary writer John McPhee described a blind, over-the-shoulder basketball shot of the equally legendary Bill Bradley, he fixed on Bradley’s explanation of how he managed to score apparently without looking at the basket. Bradley simply said, “you develop a sense of where you are.” That ‘sense’ allowed him to accomplish his purpose with no immediate idea about how his goal would be affected by events around him.
Industry participants, watchers, and regulators might enquire where we are in the complex but seemingly endless process of modernizing the U.S. electric system. Is the current focus on streamlining regulatory approval processes for infrastructure development generally— and the siting and permitting of electric transmission in particular—a sign that it’s time for the easy stuff since the Rubik’s Cubes of access, planning, cost allocation, and accommodating new technology are approaching resolution? Will this in turn be followed by a surge in electric transmission grid expansion and market integration? Ironically, during the decade of debate over siting and permitting—while policymakers make corridor determinations, run steering committees, and manufacture procedural shortcuts—U.S. transmission construction has declined precipitously. Does this give confidence that we know where we are, where the grid is headed, and how the industry will get there?
Nearly half a century has passed since Congress blessed electricity competition, renewable energy, and the gas turbine. The bulk power market is 30 years into transmission open access, and two decades down the road from market regionalization and enactment of reliability as a corporate reality, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) has added two new transmission planning regimes to this accumulation of events.
When and where will the restructuring and reform of the U.S. grid end? Today’s focus by policymakers and developers on siting and permitting the actual facilities required to move electrons to load— potentially easiest to grasp as a physical and engineering matter if not as a legal or regulatory one— should arguably have been among the first issues to be addressed. But, in fact, the cost and delay caused by a maze of uncoordinated economic and environmental restrictions on the development of new infrastructure persist in the face of a projected five-fold increase in generation to feed hungry, digitalized electricity loads (e.g., data centers, economic load growth, and electrification) and the resulting need to double the capacity of the U.S. transmission grid by 2050. Important and helpful as they might be, Dynamic Line Ratings (“DLRs”), and Grid Enhancing Technologies (“GETs”), better planning processes, or upgrades and reconductoring the system are unlikely to obviate the need for a historic level of transmission investment.
While the policy- and law-making community at the state and federal levels have analyzed whether we need to expand the grid, the questions of what kind of transmission is needed, why it’s important, how much to build and how big, the near-term and long-term impacts, and the ever-present who pays, the costs and delays that extend the development cycle of major projects to eight, 10, 15, and even 20 years are now more visible. Determining where facilities can be most productively placed in accordance with environmental law and property rights promises to grow in importance, aggravated by the division of regulatory responsibility in our federal system that makes it easy to neglect the issue or to regard siting and permitting as someone else’s responsibility.
It is in that context that an alternative has emerged that may help deploy new resources—in addition to modernizing state and federal laws and regulations—and accelerate efficient industrial development (in this case, the grid). This past spring, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine sponsored an important colloquium recognizing that siting and permitting reform needs to move on. In short, there exist two expansive domestic (indeed, international) transportation networks—namely railroads and interstate highways—that own or manage substantial linear real estate assets that could be employed as sites for electric transmission and other grid components. Those rights of way (ROWs) have in the past been used for utility crossings, communications technologies (e.g., fiber optics), and even pipelines or other energy facilities. In other words, the ROWs are “brownfields,” or property that has otherwise been disturbed or employed for diverse purposes, as distinguished from, say, protected “greenfield” properties like residential or agricultural real estate.
When located in brownfields, projects are often relieved of certain state and federal (and local) regulatory review burdens that have slowed or killed development of potentially beneficial electric infrastructure in many cases. A major argument in support of these projects also involves facilitation of the transition to a lower-carbon future and their contribution to knitting the electric system together inter-regionally at the bulk power level. More localized transmission and co-location can also provide ‘last step’ interconnection or access to load in congested urban or industrial areas where rail often pre- exists.
Siting and permitting challenges may nevertheless persist. Electrical engineering challenges, grid impacts, complications for railroad operations, and tax, real estate title, and cost issues must unquestionably be dealt with when they arise. There’s no free lunch! It is also important to acknowledge that not all ROWs have the same dimensions or are capable of safely hosting non-railroad energy infrastructure. A ROW may already contain other sensitive structures, such as electrical or water equipment, pipelines, or fiber optics. Finally, because ROWs originated (often as government land grants) as much as 150 years ago, a railroad’s rights to use or alienate that property may be quite complex. Because railroads and their real estate assets are privately owned, utilization of rail ROWs will generally entail commercial negotiations and transactions, unlike highway ROWs that tend to be more heavily subject to regulation and federal or state statutory restrictions. The ubiquitous nature of the rail system illustrates the value of its potential contribution to the topography of the nation’s grid.
Two organizations—the Rail-Grid Collaborative and NextGen Highways—are working to enable co-location of transmission (especially high-voltage direct current, or “HVDC,” facilities) within these ROWs, to ensure more reliable low-cost service, system resilience in the face of extreme weather, access to location-constrained renewables, and broader, more mature bulk power markets across state, regional, and market boundaries. Such ROWs exist today and do not necessitate use of eminent domain or new disturbance to private or public lands for the purpose of installing grid-enhancing high voltage transmission. Existing ROWs are likely to diminish a project’s exposure to measures that protect a broad array of natural, historical, or other sensitive features.
To date, the Department of Energy, FERC, and the Department of Transportation have not expressly supported or promoted these use cases in response to requests to do so. State departments of transportation have begun to allow transmission along highway ROWs but regulatory restrictions on such deployment are widespread among the states. Moreover, co-location as a remedy for high costs and delays in grid expansion are not included, or even mentioned, in the important modernization of the nation’s transmission planning regimes such as FERC’s Order 1000 or Order 1920.
Without the opportunity to utilize these ROW networks, many transmission development projects will continue to get stuck in state legislatures, regulatory agencies, courts, poor stakeholder processes, and in eminent domain litigation—or be cancelled. That said, few doubt the potential for greater shared use of railroad ROWs. The two following examples suffice to demonstrate their feasibility.
Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE)
Sited along 100-plus miles of CSX railbed, this project has an important role in hydropower energy imports and runs entirely in the state of New York (currently over 60% constructed). It involves a 1,250-megawatt (MW), HVDC voltage source converter controllable transmission system comprised of one 1,250- MW HVDC bipole. The transmission line would cross the international border from Canada into the U.S. underwater in Lake Champlain, in the Town of Champlain, New York, and extend approximately 336 miles south through New York to Queens County, New York. The state’s new Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) requires that New York be powered by 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. The CHPE is permitted and expected to be fully operational in spring of 2026, delivering 1,250 MW of low-cost renewable power directly into the New York Metro area.
SOO Green HVDC LINK
The SOO Green project takes advantage of at least three railroad ROWs. Sited along CPKC, BNSF, and Illinois Railway lines, the line has been approved by Iowa regulators and Illinois authorities. This innovative transmission line would run underground along railroad rights of way, delivering 2,100 MW of wind power from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) into the PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization (RTO) that runs the grid and wholesale electricity markets in 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, plus the District of Columbia. Until recently stuck in a complaint case involving interconnection processes, SOO Green has persisted and expects to be electrified by 2029 or 2030.
Beyond HVDC colocation within linear ROWs, railyards and ownership of other real property assets may give railroads additional potential opportunities to monetize their strategic assets and gain for additional, long-term, and high margin returns. Railroads can also deploy potential alternating current (catenary) and energy storage (batteries) applications within their ROWs for motive power. New co-located electric generation can contribute to the grid and other forms of transportation mobility. In a nutshell, it is the railroads’ private ownership of a vast interconnected network of real estate holdings that differentiates the commercial development opportunities along those rail lines from transmission colocation along a publicly owned and DOT-regulated highway system, which poses a different set of regulatory challenges. Other existing ROWs such as pipeline systems and established transmission corridors may work as well in some circumstances.
Co-located electricity projects may be just the beginning of public private partnerships and inter-sector joint actions that could marshal the major new investment needed for a 21st century grid. There is no reason that railroads (and state or federal highway regulators) cannot be players in this historical electrical power infrastructure development cycle.
Of course, industry dynamism and stress are not limited to the power business. Class I railroads have recently become attractive merger targets, and operational challenges are well-documented, as is resistance to any mention of near-term plans to electrify the freight railroad industry. Even transmission co-location, while often feasible and profitable, is not viewed as a top profit-making opportunity by Class I freight lines today. Safety and operational disruption concerns, fear of new debt, interoperability factors, and possible erosion of returns or market shares have slowed or frustrated innovation; however, as a recent study from University of Texas researchers shows, more reliance on the grid for power (overhead catenary), together with energy storage transmission, colocation could be a big win-win for railroads and power suppliers in many cases. Railroads of all classifications can both utilize the grid and facilitate the power grid development, first by leasing access to their linear real estate or rail yards. The UT study provides a glimpse of how railroaders can exercise forward-looking business judgment. The study is not a mandate for electrification; it is instead a directionally significant, data-driven reappraisal of how electrification and co-location can make business sense for rail transportation and the future of the electric grid at the same time, if implemented creatively.
Because the North American electric grid is mid-transformation, questions persist about its end state—for example, will investment patterns and industrial policy yield an integrated, national grid or a version of the historical patchwork of networks and markets? So, certainty about whether this process will erode the silos in which railroads and the power industry and their regulators still find themselves—i.e., knowing “where we are”—remains out of reach.
This blog post was adapted from a presentation in connection with a workshop presented by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in April 2025.
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