Grain Belt knows how Keystone feels

For Missouri landowners, Grain Belt Express appeared to be an unstoppable force.

Those who found themselves in the path of this 800-mile, high-voltage power line received consoling words from county commissioners or state legislators. But talk is cheap. Like the wind itself, Grain Belt Express barreled forward and blew right through the opposition.

When one side has homemade "Stop Grain Belt Express" signs and the other has former Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon as legal counsel, guess who wins?

Last week, opponents of this long-haul transmission line received some good news. The Department of Energy canceled a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for a project designed to bring wind power from western Kansas to population centers east of the Mississippi River, using Missouri as flyover country.

It remains to be seen whether this spells the end of what U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley calls a "boondoggle" and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey refers to as a "scam."

Hawley’s assessment is closer to accurate. This is a project with a price tag of $11 billion (up from $7 billion in 2023 and $2 billion in 2021). Grain Belt has its second owner in 10 years after Chicago-based Invenergy bought the assets from Houston-based Clean Line Energy.

For years, the debate over Grain Belt centered on property owners and the fairness of a for-profit entity taking land by eminent domain. The bigger issue is feasibility and the role of government for a project with rising costs, multiple owners, and lots of promises to show for the last decade.

With this history, a loan commitment in the waning days of the Biden Administration smells like a taxpayer-funded bailout. If this isn’t a boondoggle, then Invenergy has a chance to prove it by building the line without the government’s help.

Whatever happens from here, supporters and detractors should note the irony of Grain Belt finding itself in a similar position to the Keystone XL pipeline, another project with promises of energy security that faced intense political opposition.

You might say Grain Belt just got Keystoned.

At least there’s no exclamation point

Missouri Western State University’s rebrand could have been a lot worse. There’s no infuriating exclamation point (as in Trails West!), no special characters and no excessive use of capital letters for something that’s not an acronym. By rebranding as MoWest in everyday marketing, the university also avoids the air of pretentiousness that sometimes infects higher education.

A name is just a name, but MoWest seems like a way to make the institution appear more accessible and familiar, much like referring to the University of Missouri as Mizzou.