U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, wants the Trump Administration to cancel a nearly $5 billion loan approved for the Grain Belt Express. The proposed powerline would stretch across northern Missouri, transporting electricity generated by wind turbines in Kansas eastward to Indiana.
Hawley strongly opposes the project.
“There’s no way we ought to be spending $5 billion of taxpayer money on a huge giveaway to a corporation that has already seized land from Missouri farmers without appropriate compensation,” Hawley told Missourinet. “This is a Green New Deal boondoggle.”
The loan was guaranteed by the Biden Administration in late November, just weeks after Donald Trump was re-elected president.
“It is a transmission line across the middle of Missouri,” Hawley said. “Hundreds of farmers lost land, maybe more, thousands, because of it. They were not appropriately asked. They were not appropriately compensated. And what’s Missouri getting out of it? Nothing. We get virtually nothing out of it, and the federal government is subsidizing it.”
In response, Grain Belt Express spokesperson Martin Grego said the state approved the Grain Belt Express, finding that it could save Missouri energy consumers as much as $18 billion — including contractual energy-cost savings for 39 municipal utilities.
The project is strongly supported by Associated Industries of Missouri. President and CEO Ray McCarty sent a letter Monday to U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, which reads in part:
“Some have advocated that the Department of Energy (DOE) should reject the Administration’s commitment to improving America’s energy infrastructure, expediting needed grid investment, and expediting all available tools to promote energy affordability and reliability. These critics have asked DOE to delay the federal review process for Grain Belt Express – asking DOE to reject the will of Missourians as twice affirmed by the Missouri Public Service Commission’s approval of Grain Belt Express. To do so would rob Missouri of our right to dictate energy policies for our state, while rewarding the very anti-energy, anti-infrastructure advocates and past bureaucratic inefficiency that produced the current energy crisis we now face. Grain Belt Express is essential to delivering needed energy cost relief to Missouri businesses,” said McCarty.
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