Highway 50 near Austin on Nov. 18, 2024. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)
Less than two months after state energy regulators voted not to fully approve a statewide transmission line with a massive price tag proposed by NV Energy, an omnibus energy bill was introduced at the eleventh hour of the 2021 legislative session. Included in that bill was the same project state energy regulators had just partially denied.
It was the 102nd day of the session, with just 14 days to sine die, and the bill, introduced by former Sen. Chris Brooks (D-Las Vegas), required a waiver to be introduced at such a late date.
The scope of SB448 was massive.
The bill addressed tax abatements for renewable energy facilities, repealed provisions governing the state’s electric vehicle demonstration program and required NV Energy to submit a plan to accelerate transportation electrification in the state.
The bill also required NV Energy to file a plan to construct high-voltage transmission lines in the state by 2028 — the same transmission project that state utility regulators had just opted not to fully approve.
In late March of 2021, state utility regulators gave the green light to NV Energy’s proposal for a transmission line between Las Vegas and Reno, but had only partially approved a request for a line spanning from east to west across the state. Initial steps such as permitting and land acquisition were given the thumbs up, but the project's cost (estimated then at more than $2 billion) gave energy regulators pause, and they didn’t fully approve that portion of the utility’s request.
SB448 faced a smattering of opposition by a handful of environmental groups and an advocacy group for the state’s gaming industry but passed overwhelmingly, with many groups applauding the bill’s electric vehicle efforts and social justice measures.
Three years later, half of the two-part transmission project has been federally approved and the other half is in the permitting process.
Spanning from Las Vegas to Reno, Greenlink West was given the green light by federal officials earlier this year. A decision is expected next year on Greenlink North, the companion project slated to run from Ely to Yerington along Highway 50.
It is the most expensive project constructed by NV Energy and one of the most expensive privately funded construction projects in the state — Nevada lawmakers did not place any caps on the costs incurred to construct the project.
The project’s estimated cost has doubled to more than $4.2 billion and the utility, which told state lawmakers that ratepayers wouldn’t foot the bill for several years, is now asking that regulators approve its request to have customers help fund the project during construction.
The projects will traverse more than 700 miles and connect with the already existing One Nevada Transmission Line, creating a triangle-shaped high-voltage power grid spanning the state that will allow the utility to move energy across Nevada, similar to a highway system. That connection, according to NV Energy and proponents of Greenlink, will provide energy independence and increased energy reliability while positioning the state to connect to energy resources throughout the West. The energy highway will run through zones rich with renewable energy, according to the utility, containing about 4,000 megawatts of potential resources that can’t be tapped into without necessary transmission lines to move that power around the state.
Greenlink will position Nevada “to be a leader in the energy market,” Carolyn Barbash, former vice president for transmission development and policy for NV Energy, told lawmakers in 2022.
Greenlink will also generate $690 million in economic activity and create 4,000 jobs during its 12-year construction period, added Doug Cannon, president and CEO of NV Energy.
“In our rural counties, this creates important jobs and represents significant economic development,” he said.
Opponents to the Greenlink projects don’t see jobs and economic development — they see a massive price tag and environmental disaster that will forever alter the Nevada landscape, squeezed through at the eleventh hour of the legislative session after bypassing state energy regulators.
"Once again, NV Energy’s mismanagement of a project is on full display. The project cost has ballooned from $2.5 billion to $4.2 billion and is significantly behind schedule,” Christi Cabrera-Georgeson, deputy director of the Nevada Conservation League, told The Nevada Independent, adding that more transparency and better planning are needed to ensure that Greenlink is carefully developed. “Nevada families cannot be on the hook for an over-budget, poorly executed project.”
While watchdog groups haven’t identified just how much ratepayers’ fees will increase, the Nevada Bureau of Consumer Protection has protested NV Energy’s method of funding the project, stating it will “create significant upward pressure on the general rates paid by customers of the Nevada electric utilities.”
The project will open miles of undeveloped land along Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America, to solar development with the construction of Greenlink North as companies rush to build near the transmission corridor. Nevada’s open landscape will be bisected by towering power poles interspersed by seas of solar panels in some of the state’s most pristine bistate sage-grouse habitat, some opponents fear. Both projects require lines up to 180 feet tall that will tower over the desert landscape with several-hundred-foot-wide right of ways beneath them.
“I don’t think the people of Nevada have had the opportunity to understand the Greenlink project and how fundamentally it’s going to change the state,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Developing Nevada’s ‘long-term vision’
Large-scale transmission lines crisscross the West. But Nevada is a “donut” within the Western electric grid, NV Energy told state energy regulators in 2020.
While a handful of high-voltage transmission lines pass through the state, such as the Pacific DC Intertie that connects The Dalles, Oregon, to Los Angeles, California, and the Intermountain Power Project in Southern Nevada, only the One Nevada Transmission Line running from Las Vegas to Ely connects to Nevada’s grid.
Construction of the One Nevada Line, co-owned by NV Energy, included building the Robinson Summit Substation near Ely and connecting to the Harry Allen Substation near Las Vegas. It became operational in 2014 and was one of the first steps to creating a transmission network into Northern Nevada, according to the utility.
In 2020, NV Energy took a proposal for a two-part transmission line to state energy regulators that would build off the One Nevada Line and create a triangle-shaped interconnected grid in the state. New high-voltage transmission lines would be constructed between Reno and Las Vegas and Yerington and Ely. The lines would be 500kV, larger-than-average capacity transmission lines designed for long-distance energy transport.
“NV Energy believes that the future of Nevada’s economy and renewable capability are dependent on the state's transmission system’s capability to effectively and efficiently move energy throughout the state,” the utility told state energy regulators.
But utility regulators balked at the project’s hefty price tag.
While the importance of the project and its benefits were “indisputable,” the state’s energy regulators told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “the magnitude of the cost, scale, and scope of Greenlink for Nevada is extraordinary.”
Nevada’s energy regulators ultimately approved most of the proposed NV Energy project in March of 2021 — Greenlink West was given a thumbs up, while Greenlink North was approved just for permitting and exploration.
“NV Energy clearly did not agree” with partial approval, Adam Danise, a regulatory engineer for the commission, said during testimony before state energy regulators in October.
NV Energy did not seek clarification or file for reconsideration from energy regulators — instead, the utility “proceeded to go to the Nevada Legislature … to request that it mandate construction of the Greenlink Nevada Project not only for the portions of the project the Commission rejected, but for the entire Greenlink Nevada Project, which NV Energy had not even presented to the Commission for approval,” Danise added.
Constructing just half of the project would not provide increased transmission capacity or reliability benefits, according to Meghin Delaney, spokesperson for the company. With both segments of Greenlink connected to the One Nevada Line, “if any one transmission segment fails, the state still has a fully reliable transmission system,” she told The Nevada Independent in an email.
Less than two months after regulators only partially approved Greenlink, on the 102nd day of the session, SB448 was introduced, championed by Brooks.
Introduced at such a late date, the omnibus bill was granted a waiver by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) and then-Speaker of the Assembly Jason Frierson (D-Las Vegas). Bills typically must pass out of their house of origin by the 68th day of the session and out of the second house by the 110th day, and while the the Legislature has introduced major policy bills at the eleventh hour in the past, SB448 was notable because it was introduced just two days after the PUC issued its final ruling on the Greenlink case.
SB448 required NV Energy to file a high-voltage bulk transmission infrastructure plan with the PUCN by September of that year. The line was to be operational by the end of 2028.
Brooks told The Nevada Independent in 2021 that intervention into the regulatory process was warranted because the job of state energy regulators is “to keep the lights on,” not to “encourage economic development in the state of Nevada,” a sentiment he’d also shared during the session.
State energy regulators should ensure “when the utility makes an investment, it does it in the most prudent fashion possible. It does not have the ability to contemplate the economic benefit,” he said. “This plan (SB448) lays out a road map for the future of Nevada. It states if we build the transmission lines and implement this electrical infrastructure for charging, wonderful events will happen.”
Brooks told The Nevada Independent the delay in introducing SB448 was due to “the mechanics of the session,” describing “massive drafting backlogs” as lawmakers navigated the pandemic and its effects on the 2021 session.
Introducing the bill during the session “wasn’t intended to, nor do I think it did,” circumvent the role of the PUC as an energy regulator, Brooks told The Nevada Independent. “I thought it was the Legislature’s role to determine the long-term needs of Nevada and the role it will play in the regional transmission system.”
Others say routing the Greenlink project around state energy regulators guaranteed both projects were approved as requested by NV Energy while bypassing the scrutiny of state energy regulators.
“It is troubling that NV Energy regularly argues before the Commission that various situations are urgent when that’s not the case, and suggesting if the Commission fails to approve its urgent requests, the ‘sky will fall’ or dire consequences will follow,” Danise said in testimony.
Donnelly, the conservationist who said most Nevadans aren’t aware of Greenlink and its effects on the state, is known in environmental circles for his meticulous attention to detail.
But in 2021, Greenlink wasn’t on his radar, so he was surprised when a massive transmission project was proposed as part of SB448. The issue caught him so off guard he didn’t even file written opposition to the bill — of the several dozen written testimonies about the bill, only a couple other environmentalists and a spokesperson for the Nevada Resort Association (who expressed concern about the project’s cost to customers, particularly with the utility requesting customers pay up front for the work), opposed the project.
That’s because the 51-page bill was largely pitched as one focused on buildout of electric vehicle charging stations and environmental justice in historically underserved communities, and the majority of testimony favored the bill for those reasons.
The bill passed unanimously in the Assembly and Senate, with just one lawmaker excused.
“Nobody in that building knew anything about energy,” Donnelly said. “It was all delegated to him. All these other lawmakers — if Chris Brooks supported it, they supported it. The Dems deferred to him.”
Since the approval of SB448, the Greenlink project has been an unstoppable steamroller.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal agency responsible for permitting the project, “really stepped up,” Barbash, former vice president for transmission development and policy for NV Energy, told the Joint Interim Standing Committee on Growth and Infrastructure in January of 2022.
“They realized the importance of this project to the state of Nevada, to our Legislature, to our governor, to economic development, and clean energy efforts,” she said. “This is the most aggressive schedule NV Energy has had on a transmission project in the 30 to 32 years I have been here.”
But that artificially accelerated timeline — having Greenlink West online by 2027 and Greenlink North online by 2028 — is unnecessarily increasing the project’s cost by forcing its construction, Danise said in testimony.
Twice the price
While the timeline for Greenlink is aggressive, it wasn’t fast enough to keep up with inflation, the utility says. Since Greenlink was approved, its price tag has nearly doubled because of factors such as environmental concerns and inflation, and the utility is now asking state regulators to approve customers paying for the $4.24 billion project before it’s in service.
With the increased project price tag, the utility will use a combination of debt and equity to fund the project, according to Delaney, the company spokesperson. But because of the drastically increased cost, the utility is now asking state energy regulators to authorize reimbursement by customers of the project when construction begins, a process known as “construction work in progress” — a process that shifts the financial risk onto ratepayers.
Greenlink’s costs will be split between NV Energy’s wholesale transmission customers, including large casinos that don’t get their energy directly from the utility, and customers statewide, with Southern Nevada customers currently slated to pay more than their Northern Nevada counterparts. A portion of the project will also be paid for by wholesale transmission customers that use the lines to move energy through Nevada.
Project costs were expected to be recovered over more than 70 years, but more immediate increases now seem likely, despite assurances from Brooks and NV Energy executives during the passage of SB448 that wouldn’t happen.
At a 2021 Senate Committee on Growth and Infrastructure meeting several days after the bill was introduced, Cannon, NV Energy’s president and CEO, talked about the timeline for funding the project.
“We will bring $2.5 billion to the table,” Cannon said. “We will put thousands of people to work today, and Nevadans will not be asked to pay for this investment until at least five to six years down the road. Nevadans receive the benefits of that immediate economic investment.”
But at a hearing earlier this month before state energy regulators, Cannon danced around the question of how much money shareholders will bring to the Greenlink projects, limiting his statements to vagaries such as “shareholders are contributing a significant amount of money.”
After the bill passed in 2021, Brooks told the Nevada Current in an interview it was unlikely there would be any rate increases for customers.
“There is nothing that demonstrates that rates will necessarily go up at all,” Brooks said.
Cannon and Brooks also pointed out that, in the long-term, customers would benefit from cost-savings once the utility had tapped into energy markets outside the state, and that economic and environmental benefits outweigh the project’s initial cost.
The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada’s staff is recommending against the utility’s request for construction work in progress, Danise, the regulatory engineer, said during testimony.
“NV Energy’s actions in seeking to obtain financial incentives prior to ratepayers receiving any benefits associated with the Greenlink Nevada Project could be viewed as a bait-and-switch scheme,” Danise said.
Brooks’ role in SB448
For several years, Brooks, the lawmaker who introduced the bill, was the energy guy at the Nevada Legislature.
He’d spent decades in the energy industry before deciding “to take a break from that career and do some public service and join the Nevada Legislature,” he said in a February 2023 interview with Nevada Newsmakers.
First elected to the Assembly in 2016, Brooks was appointed by the Clark County Commission to represent Nevada's Senate District 3 in November 2018 to fill a vacant seat. He won a full, four-year term in 2020.
He was involved in several high-profile pieces of legislation around energy transmission and storage, including playing a role in the legislation that restored favorable net-metering rates to rooftop solar customers and leading the charge on increasing the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard — the amount of energy NV Energy must acquire from renewable resources — to 50 percent by 2030.
He also introduced bills that favored NV Energy, including a bill in 2019 that was signed into law making it harder for large businesses to leave the utility and purchase power from another provider.
But the biggest bill of Brooks’ political career, he said, was SB448, a bill that reflected a career in energy that dated back to his teenage years, Brooks told The Nevada Independent. His first job was as an apprentice to a lineworker; after that, he worked for his grandfather building electrical distribution systems.
Those early experiences “helped me inform how I could best help the state and how to best grow this economy,” he said. “The need for increased transmission capacity was driven by the need to access affordable and reliable clean energy supplies … All of those needs are driven by the economy of the state of Nevada.”
But in November 2022, Brooks resigned halfway through his four-year term to take the position of senior vice president of external relations for the solar company Arevia Power, a position he still holds.
It wasn’t the first time Brooks had worked with Arevia. He was first approached by the company in 2017 — he had started his own consulting business the year prior while serving in the state Assembly — to serve as a consultant on its Gemini Solar project, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Gemini was the first utility-scale solar project in Nevada to benefit from SB358, a Brooks-sponsored bill that raised the percentage of renewable energy provided by utilities to 50 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.
With Brooks on board, California-based Arevia Power opened its Las Vegas office in 2023 with “an aggressive pipeline of planned projects” for states across the West, including Nevada.
The company has a proposal for the massive Esmeralda 7 solar project proposed for Esmeralda County, as well as for three solar projects on more than 9,200 acres in the Ely area. Arevia has also initiated a wind project in Northern Nevada.
Read more: Vegas-sized solar project could come to Nevada's smallest county; residents not thrilled
In the years since Brooks successfully shepherded SB448 into law, NV Energy has signed on for lucrative partnerships with the company Brooks now works for, with both companies’ projects getting the go-ahead from the federal government.
Earlier this year, Arevia Power announced the signing of a power purchase agreement with NV Energy for the largest solar energy and battery storage project in Nevada. Valued at more than $2.3 billion, the Libra Solar project will straddle 5,100 acres on the border of Lyon and Mineral counties and include a 700 megawatt solar array and a 700 megawatt battery storage system.
Three months after the power purchase agreement between Arevia and NV Energy was signed, the BLM gave the go ahead to the Libra Solar Project. That same day, the BLM gave final approval for Greenlink West.
“It seems like his legislation was very favorable for the company he works for,” said Kevin Emmerich, co-founder Basin and Range Watch. “There’s some really good timing coincidences there.”
Brooks points out that his legislative bills addressed a wide range of energy initiatives and that he spent many years working to advance Nevada’s clean energy future before he took office.
“My career in this field began long before my time in the Nevada Legislature,” he told The Nevada Independent.
Left to right: The east shore of Walker Lake near Shurz on Nov. 17, 2024. Electrical transmission lines near NV Energy's Frank A. Tracy Generating Station complex in Sparks near USA Parkway on Nov. 17, 2024. The Reese River near Austin on Nov. 18, 2024. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)
‘It’s not the way it should be’
As the fully permitted project of the two Greenlink lines, Greenlink West has largely garnered most of the attention, primarily for its planned crossing through Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, vast stretches of endangered desert tortoise habitat and land owned by The Nature Conservancy.
The line was also designed to pass through areas previously identified by the BLM as ideal for solar development, Barbash said in 2022, describing the zones as “very rich” and “Nevada’s to serve our customers with low-cost energy.”
But those areas remain undeveloped. Instead, solar companies are jockeying to build solar arrays around the proposed substations (needed to convert energy before it can be transmitted) that are being proposed along with Greenlink, opening even more areas up to becoming large solar fields.
Overall, Greenlink includes constructing or expanding seven substations across the state to support the more than 900 percent increase in solar generation Nevada has seen during the past decade.
Seven solar project proposals have been submitted for an area in Esmeralda County where a substation is planned; other projects are being proposed for areas spanning from the Big Smoky Valley north of Austin to the Amargosa Valley area, where additional substations are planned.
Opponents to the Greenlink project worry those substations will open the areas surrounding them to large-scale solar projects.
“The generation projects haven’t popped up yet, but they will because of the route,” Larry Johnson, president of the Coalition for Nevada’s Wildlife, told The Nevada Independent. “We’re rushing into this thing headlong as if nothing else matters. It’s not the way it should be.”
Conservationists are resigned to Greenlink West’s construction. But they still hope the northern transmission line can be altered to be less environmentally destructive.
Greenlink North’s current routing along Highway 50 sends it directly through miles of prime sage-grouse habitat. With ever dwindling populations because of development, climate change and other factors, sage-grouse have hovered on the brink of being listed as “endangered” for years, although they remain unlisted.
Groups such as the Sierra Club are advocating for the line to be rerouted from Highway 50 to Interstate 80, a major travel corridor that has already seen substantial development.
“We hope to get Greenlink North to a place where it can help deliver on some of our energy needs without being in direct conflict with our conservation needs,” Olivia Tanager, Toiyabe Chapter director of the Sierra Club, said in an email.
And even if the line isn’t rerouted, just delaying its construction is a win, said Emmerich, the Southern Nevada conservationist who has followed the project for years.
“If you can delay something for 10 years, that’s a victory,” Emmerich said. “It’s a dire situation. We have to kind of take what we can get.”