Delays, delays, delays. It takes forever to build the transmission lines that carry power from where it's produced to where people use it.

Idaho Power and PacifiCorp can tell you. The two utilities thought they'd be starting construction back in 2018 on the Boardman to Hemingway (B2H) transmission line, which spans 290 miles of Idaho and Oregon. The project broke ground this summer, 19 years after the utilities initially proposed the project.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) can tell you. It flipped the switch on its 16-mile Energize Eastside transmission line upgrade project in 2024, a full six years after the utility needed the line in service to meet customer demand and ten years after the project's launch.

State and local permitting alone ate up eight and nine years of each project's respective schedule, from environmental reviews to land use approvals. (B2H also required federal permits, extending the total permitting timeline for that project to more than 15 years.) Even now, three years after Oregon first granted Idaho Power approval to begin construction-a decision now twice upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court-Umatilla County still has not granted the utility all the permits it needs to break ground within its jurisdiction.

These holdups don't come cheap. Permitting delays pushed Energize Eastside's project costs up by $52.4 million, increasing the total project budget by 11.5 percent. B2H's cost estimates ballooned by at least $300 million (from $1.0-1.2 billion in a 2018 estimate to $1.5-1.7 billion), at least in part because of permitting delays.

And it's not utilities that suffer when projects stall; it's consumers: through higher electricity bills and dirtier, less reliable power.

Transmission permitting delays beget higher project costs, and, later on, higher electricity bills in four main ways:

When utilities want to build a transmission project, they must find a way to pay for it. Most utilities raise these funds by borrowing from lenders and by attracting investors who buy shares in the company, each expecting a return on their investment. Utilities add these financing charges to the project's construction costs and eventually, with regulatory approval, to customers' monthly bills.

To make matters worse for ratepayers, federal utility accounting rules treat financing costs as a capital expense, which means that, in the peculiar universe of utility regulation, utilities get to profit from them. As a result, electricity customers end up paying twice: first through the interest accrued during construction and again when utilities earn a return on that same interest once the project enters the rate base. Put another way, utilities make money on project delays.

In fact, utilities profit from -any- permitting-related cost increase, not only financing charges.

Let's take an example. The above-mentioned Energize Eastside project by PSE, which upgraded 16 miles of transmission lines stretching between Seattle-area suburbs Renton and Bellevue, will keep power flowing reliably to several growing communities. Permitting delays increased the project's financing costs by $5 million, Sightline estimates, bringing the total permitting-related delay costs to $52.4 million.

But Bellevue, Redmond, Renton, and Newcastle's slow approvals of Energize Eastside won't only cost ratepayers $52.4 million. Over 60 years (the approximate average lifespan of a transmission line), due to utilities' regulated rate of return, ratepayers will pay back around $167 million.2

In other words, for every $1 million in costs added to rate base, customers will pay PSE about $3.2 million.

Ten years ago, Idaho Power estimated it would be able to energize the B2H line in 2021, enabling the Pacific Northwest and the Intermountain West to better share power, especially during the Northwest's winter peak and the Intermountain West's summer peak. Two years later, it revised that estimate to 2024, citing "ongoing permitting requirements." In its most recent quarter...