PNNL

Background

Across the United States, there have been partnerships between landowners, surrounding communities, and transmission developers and operators to enhance the space surrounding transmission lines, often called powerline corridors. These enhancements to powerline corridors can provide public benefits by providing ecosystem services, promoting recreation, and contributing to local prosperity.

As the nation acts to meet the pace of transmission development needed to maintain a reliable and cost-effective electric grid, there is an opportunity to design powerline corridors with an eye toward strong local benefits and environmental stewardship. These benefits can be realized in both existing and new powerline corridors.

Project Overview

The Connecting Transmission Corridors (ConCord) Initiative is an Office of Electricity initiative led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to investigate the full range of public benefits that can be enabled through corridor investments. Through innovative approaches and collaborative partnerships, the initiative will identify successful models and provide technical tools and resources for evaluating benefits in existing as well as future transmission infrastructure.

The ConCord Initiative aims to:

• Increase public recognition of potential benefits of electric transmission infrastructure.
• Enable a broad platform and network that shares credible and useful information about public, local, and environmental benefits from physical transmission infrastructure and the surrounding corridors.
• Expand and extend potential powerline corridor benefits into current and future transmission development.

Powerline Corridor Benefits

Recreation, ecosystem services, and local wealth-building are three types of public benefits that can be planned in powerline corridors to supplement the reliability, energy, and carbon benefits of the lines themselves. Planning projects that include benefits targeted specifically toward the communities and environment affected by the line—as opposed to the electricity consumers at the end of the line—reflects a modern development model that ensures a broader set of locally available benefits. 

Access to recreational opportunities is one of the most well-established benefits provided by transmission infrastructure. Public use of rights-of-way for recreating on linear trails and paths (often referred to as “transmission trails”), as well as open outdoor spaces like parks and athletic fields, draw broadly across communities. Transmission can also be planned with natural features and local environmental conditions in mind. This includes enhancing habitats for endangered and threatened species, using integrated vegetation management practices, creating pollinator habitats, and employing new technologies to better understand ecological conditions in these areas. There are also approaches to transmission development that can provide communities with new economic development opportunities and ongoing agricultural opportunities.

This initiative will outline options and identify best practices for providing these three categories of public benefits. It will also explore how transmission developers and operators – as well as others such as state and local governments, and transmission planners – can help to ensure these and other public benefits accompany transmission infrastructure whenever possible to maximize the benefits of limited land resources, and increase local acceptance of infrastructure.

Contact Us

For more information on the ConCord Initiative, please contact:

Rebecca O’Neil, Principal Investigator   
Rebecca.ONeil@pnnl.gov | (971) 940-7098

Irena Netik, Project Manager   
Irena.Netik@pnnl.gov | (509) 375-7098