NIETCs are dead. Long live NIETCs.
It looks like the pipe dream of federally guided interregional transmission construction will never become a reality.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced that the Department of Energy (DOE) is pulling the plug on the review process for the three remaining proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (NIETCs).
The Lake Erie–Canada Corridor, Southwestern Grid Connector Corridor, and Tribal Energy Access Corridor were the last standing of the 10 potential NIETCs identified by the DOE in 2024. Spanning more than 3,500 miles, the projects would’ve been eligible for hefty loans intended to accelerate construction of high-voltage lines in high-congestion and vulnerable areas of the U.S. power grid. The other seven were ditched by the DOE in December of 2024.
Secretary Wright cited extensive review, including public feedback and stakeholder input, that informed his office that the current designation process for the three proposed transmission corridors should not continue.
“Transmission policy must serve the American people—not special interests or a climate-alarmist agenda that drives up costs, worsens reliability, and disregards the concerns of local communities,” Secretary Wright stated. “The Trump Administration is committed to strengthening America’s electric grid with common-sense policies that prioritize delivering affordable, reliable, and secure electricity to American families and businesses.”
Construction of high-voltage transmission lines is expensive and time-consuming, with many large projects taking a decade to complete. As such, transmission development is consistently identified as a major bottleneck across the energy industry. In fact, thousands of gigawatts of projects remain queued for interconnection across the country, many awaiting the proper poles and wires to carry the electrons they generate.
In July, the DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE) released a draft of its 2026 National Transmission Needs Study, identifying extensive transmission needs driven by growing electricity demand. It specifically cites a dire need for interregional and intraregional transmission development, making Wednesday’s decision a bit puzzling on its face. While NIETCs, as a concept, aren’t perfect (the other seven initially scoped endeavors were axed for a variety of reasons, including pushback from landowners) and federal funding for some relevant projects had already been yanked before the corridors’ latest death knell, the news feels like a setback at best. Flaws aside, federal loans supporting the 86’d trio were probably the best shot at jump-starting transmission projects of such ambitious scope and scale.
The DOE cites other recent investments in transmission infrastructure and modernizing existing infrastructure, including:
- An October 2025 $1.6 billion loan guarantee to AEP Transmission to reconductor and rebuild nearly 5,000 miles of transmission lines across five states
- $26.5 billion in loans to Southern Company subsidiaries Georgia Power and Alabama Power to support generation and grid investments, including more than 1,300 miles of transmission and grid enhancement projects
- The $1.9 billion SPARK funding opportunity announced in March to increase grid capacity, reliability, and affordability
- A roughly $3.3 billion loan to AEP Texas in July to build, rebuild, or reconductor more than 2,800 miles of transmission lines
In the announcement of their cancellation, Wright took shots at the Lake Erie–Canada Corridor, Southwestern Grid Connector Corridor, and Tribal Energy Access Corridor, calling them a “means to advance (a) Green New Scam agenda and accelerate decarbonization.”
As the process unfolded, Wright determined, the current designation framework proved ineffective in strengthening grid reliability and reducing electricity costs. In some communities, it also contributed to confusion and concern about the scope and intent of NIETC authority.
The Lake Erie-Canada corridor would have helped maintain and improve grid reliability and resilience, and would have provided interregional connections between Canada and PJM Interconnection. The Southwestern Grid Connector Corridor aimed to alleviate congestion and meet future generation and demand growth while increasing clean energy integration, cross-connecting Southwest Power Pool and WestConnect. The Tribal Energy Access Corridor targeted reducing consumer costs and improving clean energy integration while facilitating Tribal energy and economic development, all according to the DOE.
If all of this sounds slightly familiar, it’s because this isn’t the first time in recent history that the concept of NIETCs has been identified as a sort of panacea for grid woes, only to be relegated to the dustbin of unrealized ideas.
Transmission lines caught the attention of many Americans after a series of blackouts in the early 2000s. Addressing these reliability issues and the underlying problem of transmission line bottlenecks, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 directed the DOE to establish NIETCs and gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) some added authority over transmission line siting within them.
The first official NIETCs, the Mid-Atlantic Area and Southwest Area NIETCs, were designated in 2007. The Mid-Atlantic covered more than 116,000 square miles spanning parts of eight states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia) and Washington, D.C. The Southwest Area swept through Southern California and Arizona.
As contributor Benjamin Falber wrote all the way back in 2013, eight years after the passage of the Energy Policy Act, NIETCS still didn’t exist, and FERC’s siting authority was limited to stepping in if a state does not act within a year to decide on a transmission siting permit. That’s largely because designations for both NIETCs were struck down and vacated in February 2011 by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California Wilderness Coalition v. U.S. Department of Energy. The court ruled that the DOE failed to properly consult with affected states and to conduct the environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
