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Document name / Environmental and Cultural Data Applications for WECC 2013 Interconnection-Wide Transmission Plan
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Document date / May 28, 2013
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Environmental and Cultural Data Applications for WECC 2013 Interconnection-Wide Transmission Plan

By

Environmental Data Task Force

Chair: Carl Zichella, Natural Resources Defense Council

Western Electricity Coordinating Council

DRAFT: May 28, 2013

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Table of Contents

1.Overview: The Value of the Environmental Consideration Process in Transmission Planning

2Environmental and Cultural Transmission Planning Products and Processes

2.1Environmental Recommendations for Transmission Planning Report

2.2Environmental and Cultural Tools for Use in Transmission Planning

2.2.1Environmental and Cultural Data Set Catalog

2.2.2Environmental Risk Land Classification System

2.3Environmental and Cultural Methods for Use in Transmission Planning

2.3.1Transmission Alternative Environmental Risk Comparison Methods

2.3.2Transmission Alternative Layers Optimized for Environmental Costs in WECC’s Long-Term Planning Tool

2.4Additional Products under Development/Consideration for Use in Transmission Planning

2.4.1Geospatial Data Viewer

2.4.2Cultural Resource Data Sets and Methods for Interconnection-Wide Transmission Planning

2.4.3Economic Valuation Methods

2.4.4Compensatory Mitigation Cost Methods

2.5Processes for Addressing Environmental and Cultural Risks in Transmission Planning

2.5.1EDTF Recommendations on Diverse Stakeholder Engagement

2.5.2Identify Environmental Risks Early in the Transmission Planning Process

2.6Future Activities for Transmission Planning

3.Value and Use of EDTF Products and Processes

3.1WECC Processes

3.2Regional Planning Processes and FERC Order 1000

3.3State Processes

3.4Federal Identification and Designation of Transmission Corridors

3.5Value Added for Stakeholder Groups

3.5.1Environmental Stakeholders

3.5.2Academic and Research Institution Stakeholders

3.5.3Utilities and Transmission Developers:

4.Challenges and Opportunities for Minimizing Environmental Risks of Transmission

4.1Optimizing Via Transmission Technologies

4.2Optimizing via Transmission Policies and Standards

4.3References

5.EDTF Members

Table 1.Status of EDTF Data Sets

Conclusions and Recommendations

Glossary

References

1.Overview: The Value of the Environmental Consideration Process in Transmission Planning

The development of any large infrastructure project in the West must address many environmental and cultural resource constraints in order to obtain permits and gain public acceptance. Transmission lines are no exception, and may face greater hurdles than other projects because they have prominent visual impacts, typically cross numerous ecological zones, and often involve multiple administrative jurisdictions. Consequently, the use of environmental and cultural transmission planning products developed initially by the Environmental Data Task Force (EDTF) and incorporated by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) into its transmission planning process, couldadd significant value to transmission planning, and ultimately transmission development, in a variety of ways for many stakeholders.[1] The environmental and culturalproducts are used both within the WECC transmission planning process and outside of WECC by industry, regulators, and other stakeholders.The intent of this effort is to expedite the construction of needed transmission by spending a little time up front at the planning level in order to save time, possibly years, during the siting and construction phases.

The WECCScenario Planning Steering Group (SPSG) formed the EDTF in June 2010 to develop recommendations on the type, quality, and sources of data on land, wildlife, cultural, historical, archaeological, and water resources, while exploring ways to transform those data into a format usable in WECC’s study cases including the 10-year plan and long-term planning models.[2]

The EDTF has developed a suite of tools and methods for considering environmental and cultural resources in transmission planning, which are described in Section 2. These transmission planning products include an Environmental and Cultural Data Set Catalog, Environmental Risk Land Classification System, Transmission Alternative Environmental Risk Comparison Methods, and Transmission Alternative Optimized Environmental Cost Surface for WECC’s Long-Term Planning Tool, among others.

The environmental and cultural products and processes are beginning to be used by diverse stakeholders to support Interconnection-Wide transmission planning in the following ways:

  1. Save time and money by identifying and, where possible, avoiding challenges to transmission development that might occur in the absence of transmission plans that incorporate environmental and cultural attributes/considerations;
  2. Provide common, consistent, and stakeholder-vetted sources of information about environmental and cultural resource sensitivities relevant to transmission planning, that areusable by all transmission planning stakeholders;
  3. Improve Interconnection-Wide transmission planning efforts by incorporating environmental and cultural resource sensitivities into modeling efforts that previously focused on reliability, cost, and engineering factors;
  4. Increase public and regulatoryunderstanding of transmission plans that progress to the siting level by identifying sensitive issues at the planning stage; and
  5. Serve as a model for sub-regional and state/provincial planning efforts.

The environmental and culturaltransmission planning productswill facilitate knowledge transfer within planning organizations and is being used within WECC’s transmission plans as well asbeginning to be used outside of WECC by industry, regulators, and stakeholders. New tools are underdevelopment, including a data viewer to enable stakeholders to investigate, understand and utilize the environmental and cultural information and analytical products; and a cultural resource risk methodsto accompany the environmental methodsalready in place. The data and methods are expected to inform choices made by developers and project proponents, and can inform planning efforts such as:

  • WECC’s transmission planning activities;
  • Individual utility transmission planning activities;
  • Individual state and regional planning efforts coordinated by the Western Governors’ Association and its members;
  • Regional and interregional planning conducted under the auspices of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Order 1000; and
  • The Department of Energy’s Corridor Designation under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

2Environmental and Cultural Transmission Planning Products and Processes

From 2010 through 2012, the EDTF published several major products to assist in the consideration of environmental and cultural risks in Interconnection-Wide transmission planning. The purpose of these tools, methods, and analyses are described below. A description of their current and potential uses within and outside of WECC can be found in Section 3.

2.1Environmental Recommendations for Transmission Planning Report

In May 2011, the EDTF delivered its first major report: Environmental Recommendations for Transmission Planning to the SPSG. This report documents the foundational work of the EDTF: it describes the methods used by the EDTF to understand the major issues related to Interconnection-Wide transmission planning and environmental sensitivities; describes development of the list of environmental and cultural data sets (see section 2.2.1) and associated Land Classification System (see section 2.2.2); and recommends incorporating this work into the TEPPC Planning Protocol (which occurred in 2012). The report also identified a set of future activities for the EDTF, many of which have since been accomplished.

This report was included as an appendix to the 2011 WECC 10-Year Regional Transmission Plan and marked a major shift towards substantial incorporation of environmental and cultural considerations into Interconnection-Wide transmission planning in the Western Interconnection. This report remains useful as a guide to understanding the approach that WECC has taken for incorporating environmental and cultural resource sensitivities in its planning activities.

2.2Environmental and Cultural Tools for Use in Transmission Planning

A core premise of the work to incorporate environmental risks in the transmission planning process is that by identifying environmental risks early in the planning process, they can be more easily minimized. By knowing about the presence of environmentally sensitive resources—including land, visual, wildlife, cultural, historical, archaeological, and water resources—earlyin the planning process, planners can understand and anticipate risks of selecting specific transmission routes and stakeholders canidentify potential conflicts and opportunities for transmission development. Incorporating environmental and cultural information upfront in the transmission planning process can reduce the potential for conflict with these resources during subsequent siting, permitting, and construction. While high voltage transmission lines have a relatively small direct footprint on the ground, needed vegetation management, roads for maintenance and other associated activities can have direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts on wildlife, wildlife habitat, cultural and historical features, visual and noise, human health, property, and water resources.

2.2.1Environmental and Cultural Data Set Catalog

The Environmental and Cultural Data Set Catalogis a compilation of all the environmental and cultural data sets considered by the EDTF for potential inclusion in Interconnection-Wide transmission planning efforts. The EDTF developed a Data Quality Protocol (also included in the Data Set Catalog document) to screen the data sets for completeness and fitness-for-use. The Data Set Catalog contains both the environmental and cultural data sets approved by the EDTF for use in regional transmission planning (the EDTF’s “preferred data”), as well as data sets considered but not used by the EDTF.

Currently, the bulk of the Data Set Catalog consists of U.S. data. While the current version of the environmental and culturalseamless data layer contains information for Canada, additional and updated data are needed from the Canadian portions of WECC. The EDTF is working to update and improve Canadian data by conducting concentrated data outreach with Canadian data stewards and stakeholders. The EDTF will also discuss conducting efforts to improve the robustness of the Mexican data sets (specifically, for the portion of Baja, Mexico, that is in the Western Interconnection) included in the Data Set Catalog.

The Data Set Catalog primarily includes environmental and cultural resources data. The EDTF has had preliminary discussions about including visual resource, environmental justice, and vegetation data in the Data Set Catalog but has not determined an appropriate way to do so at a planning scale. In the future, the EDTF may propose studying these topics in more detail.[3]

The EDTF recognizes the importance of having high-quality, granular data sets describing existing transmission facilities, rights-of-way, and corridors. However, this information is currently not publicly available. Within the LTPT, WECC uses licensed, high-quality data to ensure that transmission facility, right-of-way, and corridor data are accurate. In the future, the EDTF may work with other entities within WECC to determine whether there are ways to provide stakeholder access to these high-quality datathat are appropriate for use in transmission planning recognizing concerns about misuse of such data.

Datasets from the inventory that met the Data Quality Protocol and were processed by the EDTF into the Environmental Risk Land Classification System (described below) by May 5, 2012,were subsequently included in WECC’s Long-Term Planning Tool (LTPT).

WECC will conduct a biennial update of the Data Set Catalog to ensure that preferred data sets are up to date and that newly available data sets are evaluated.

2.2.2Environmental Risk Land Classification System

The EDTF identified various environmental and cultural “area types” (discrete environmental and cultural features on the landscape), and subsequently identified appropriate planning-level environmental and cultural data sets to correspond to those area types.The EDTF developed anEnvironmental Risk Land Classification Systemthat estimates the environmental and cultural sensitivity of the different area types using a scale of 1 to 4, with the areas that are most sensitive to transmission development classified as 4 (highest risk) and the areas least sensitive classified as 1 (lowest risk). The diverse members of the EDTF reviewed the environmental and cultural features represented in each data set and agreed on the appropriate risk classification. The classifications agreed to by the EDTF were used to create a seamless Environmental and Cultural Risk Classification Data Layer, which categorizes the entire Western Interconnection using the 1 to 4 scale.

Figure 1.Environmental Risk Land Classification System Categories and Example Area Types

WECC is currently using the Environmental Risk Land Classification System in combination with the Environmental and Cultural Data Set Catalog in the LTPT to ensure that the optimized transmission solutions in the 20-year planning timeframe avoid the most sensitive environmental and cultural areas. See Table 1. Status of EDTF Data Setsat the end of this document for additional information on which data sets are currently in use by the LTPT.

Figure 2. Illustrative Potential Application of Environmental Risk Categories to Create Geospatially Defined Transmission Alternatives

2.3Environmental and Cultural Methods for Use in Transmission Planning

2.3.1Transmission Alternative Environmental Risk Comparison Methods

The EDTF developed Transmission Alternative Environmental Risk Comparison Methods(the “comparison process”) to provide a consistent approach for evaluating environmental and cultural risks to transmission planning that could be easily communicated to decision-makers, transmission planners, and other stakeholders in the transmission planning process. The comparison process is intended to identify potential environmental and cultural risks to proposed transmission additions early in the planning process, with the goals of improving the alternatives considered by project developers,improving decisions made by transmission proponents during initial (pre-siting) project planning and reducing the time required to complete projects.

The comparison process consists of four steps, based on both the EDTF’s preferred data and Environmental Land Risk Classification System, and input from transmission stakeholders:

1.)Identify environmental and cultural data sources and assign risk classification categories– The EDTF leverages input from stakeholders to fill environmental and cultural data gaps (e.g., the EDTF’s ongoing work with cultural resource stakeholders) and ensures that the EDTF’s preferred data is up-to-date through the biennial Data Open Season.

2.)Identify alternatives to compare – The comparison process was developed to be flexible enough to allow comparison of a range of potential alternatives. Initially, the EDTF intends to apply the process to a subset of the planning level transmission alternatives from the Common Case Transmission Assumptions, WECC Transmission Project Information Portal projects, and 20-year plan alternatives from the LTPTs. See Section 3, below, for further description of these processes.

3.)Conduct analyses– The comparison process is designed to include both a “data-driven” and “stakeholder-driven” analysis. The data-driven analysis identifies alternative descriptions (e.g., length and other engineering factors) and Environmental and Cultural Risk Scores (i.e., a numeric value) for each transmission alternative. The stakeholder-driven analysis leverages expert stakeholder knowledge to validate the comparison process findings and to identify areas where Environmental and Cultural Risk Scores do not appropriately capture environmental and cultural risks associated with a specific transmission alternative.

Figure 3. Relationship of Transmission Alternatives from 10- and 20-Year Timeframes
to the Comparison Process[4]

4.)Document and Publicize Findings – The EDTF intends for the results of the comparison process to be freely and publicly available. The results could be published through updates to the existing EDTF documents posted on the WECC webpage and/or through developers’ own project web sites. In addition, the comparison process includes direction for outreach to stakeholders to enable broader awareness and understanding of planning tools and products, and to promote understanding of the results through targeted outreach (webinars, panels and relevant conferences) to public utility commissions, states/provinces, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

2.3.2Transmission Alternative Layers Optimized for Environmental Costsin WECC’s Long-Term Planning Tool

WECC has begun conducting long-term transmission planning with a “horizon year” of 20 or more years. In support of 20-year studies, WECC has developed a LTPT to optimally derive physically feasible network expansions necessary to meet the load and generation requirements of future scenario study cases while minimizing the net present value of capital costs.(See section 3.1 for more details about the LTPT.)The LTPT can take into consideration environmental costs and risks by identifying network expansions that are “least cost” or “least risk” paths based on the Environmental and Cultural Risk Land Classification System described above.During the current planning cycle, the bending of transmission corridors optimally through geospatial cost layerswas performed as a separate step after the initial transmission expansion, which was based on cost and engineering considerations alone. WECC expects to have both the “line bending” step and the transmission expansion step fully integrated as one all-inclusive step within the LTPT for use in developing the 2013-2014 Plan.

Figure 4. Optimized cost layer (purple line), based on environmental impact