Hit with legal delays in the five years since the Grain Belt Express Clean Line was proposed in Kansas and three other states, the company now faces an order from Kansas regulators to prove it can finish the $2.2 billion project. It’s also been given more time to do it.
The Kansas Corporation Commission issued a recent order regarding the company’s plan to build a massive wind-power line through 14 counties in Kansas. It ordered the company to prove by late November that it could financially finish the 780 project that would also run through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.
After receiving data from Graint Belt Express Clean Line LLC officials, the KCC extended a Sunset term to March 1, 2019. The company will have to provide more information of its “financial,managerial and technical ability to complete the project.”
The line is to run from southwestern Kansas in an area that has been described by some wind proponents as the “Saudi Arabia of wind.” Once it is completed, it will connect to the Eastern power grid and deliver enough energy to power more than 1.5 million homes a year.
It ran into opposition in Missouri but this past fall, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in support of it.