Electricity Transmission, Pipelines, and National Trails: An Analysis of Current and Potential Intersections on Federal Lands in the Eastern United States, Alaska, and Hawaii
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
As has been noted in many reports and publications, acquiring new or expanded rights-of-way for transmission is a challenging process, because numerous land use and land ownership constraints must be overcome to develop pathways suitable for energy transmission infrastructure. In the eastern U.S., more than twenty federally protected national trails (some of which are thousands of miles long, and cross many states) pose a potential obstacle to the development of new or expanded electricity transmission capacity. However, the scope of this potential problem is not well-documented, and there is no baseline information available that could allow all stakeholders to study routing scenarios that could mitigate impacts on national trails. This report, Electricity Transmission, Pipelines, and National Trails: An Analysis of Current and Potential Intersections on Federal Lands in the Eastern United States, was prepared by the Environmental Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne). Argonne was tasked by DOE to analyze the “footprint” of the current network of National Historic and Scenic Trails and the electricity transmission system in the 37 eastern contiguous states, Alaska, and Hawaii; assess the extent to which national trails are affected by electrical transmission; and investigate the extent to which national trails and other sensitive land use types may be affected in the near future by planned transmission lines. Pipelines are secondary to transmission lines for analysis, but are also within the analysis scope in connection with the overall directives of Section 368 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and because of the potential for electrical transmission lines being collocated with pipelines.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Electricity (OE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1333001
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/EVS-14/4 Rev. 1; 131478
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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