Washington (Platts)--7Jun2013/545 pm EDT/2145 GMT

US President Barack Obama, calling the US electricity grid "the backbone of our economy" on Friday directed the government to take additional steps to speed the siting, permitting and construction of transmission lines across large swaths of the country.

In a seven-page memo sent to the heads of the executive-branch agencies, Obama said the US must continue to modernize the grid to move electricity from wind farms and other renewable-energy projects in rural, sparsely populated areas to big load centers on the coasts.

Modernizing the grid also is crucial to minimize power outages and stave off the types of cyber-attacks that have targeted electric utilities and other industries in recent years, the president said.

"In order to ensure the growth of America's clean energy economy and improve energy security, we must modernize and expand our electric transmission grid," he said in the memo. "Modernizing our grid will improve energy reliability and resiliency, allowing us to minimize power outages and manage cyber-security threats."

The steps that Obama outlined in his memo primarily pertain to expediting the siting, permitting and construction of transmission lines across federal lands, even though such lines often traverse private or state lands as well.

The bulk of the new directives in Obama's memo pertain to the designation of "energy right-of-way corridors" on federal land that Congress gave the departments of Energy and Agriculture authority to establish as part of a 2005 energy law. Four years ago, DOE and USDA used that authority to designate a number of corridors in 11 Western states such as Nevada and Arizona, where renewable-energy companies are building utility-scale solar and wind facilities on public lands.

Obama said it is time for the government to start designating corridors for transmission lines across federal lands in "non-Western states" and set a September 1, 2014, deadline for DOE and USDA to recommend where those transmission corridors should be established.

"It is important that agencies build on their existing efforts in a coordinated manner," Obama said in the memo.

As for the 11 designated Western states that already have corridors on federal lands, Obama directed DOE and USDA to "strongly encourage" energy companies to use those established rights of way. The only exception to that approach, Obama said, is when "a project cannot be constructed within a designated corridor due to resource constraints on federal lands."

--Brian Hansen, brian.hansen@platts.com
--Edited by Jeff Barber, jeff.barber@platts.com

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