In 2023, Washington state legislators attempted to make it easier to build long-distance power lines. Recognizing that more wires are essential to reaching 100 percent clean electricity - and that, quote: "transmission projects take a decade or more to develop and permit" end-quote, lawmakers directed a state agency to preemptively analyze the environmental impact of these projects.
More specifically, legislators tasked the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (or EFSEC) with preparing a so-called "programmatic environmental impact statement" (or PEIS) for hypothetical large transmission lines. The PEIS's purpose is to evaluate possible environmental harms of transmission lines and identify ways to mitigate them before specific project proposals to facilitate more responsible and quicker project completion. Sightline supported the idea.
In March 2025, EFSEC dropped its draft assessment with a virtual thud. Spanning 1,083 pages, the PEIS catalogs dozens of possible impacts of transmission line projects, largely drawn from Washington's State Environmental Policy Act (or SEPA) rules. It is mind-bendingly comprehensive, assessing impacts ranging from the environmental (like soil erosion and habitat loss) to the economic (such as changes in home value) to the faintly absurd (for example "Physical Hazard to Aerial Recreation Enthusiasts").
EFSEC analyzed 72 impacts across three project phases (construction, operations and maintenance, and upgrades and maintenance) for both overhead and underground lines. To save you the math, that's 432 distinct assessments.
But nowhere in its 1,083 pages does the PEIS analyze how transmission lines would affect the biggest environmental issue of our day: climate change.
EFSEC isn't entirely to blame. The legislature directed the agency to focus on "significant adverse environmental impacts" of electric transmission facilities. Climate change does not obviously fit into this definition. (Though arguably, neither does aerial recreation.) And to be fair, the document does explain, in a two-page Purpose & Needs section, that "existing constraints on transmission capacity within the state already present challenges in ensuring adequate and affordable supplies of clean electricity."
But by failing to assess how expanding the grid would reduce climate pollution, these 1,083 pages leave decisionmakers without the full picture they need to weigh the trade-offs of critical clean energy infrastructure.
Even though the draft PEIS only tells half the story, it does offer one clear takeaway: stringing up wires can be, by and large, not hugely environmentally harmful, and most harms can be mitigated through careful planning, site selection, and design.
EFSEC rates each possible impact on a scale ranging from "nil" to "high." It then offers mitigation techniques that the agency says would bring the impact determination to a "less than significant level."
Before even applying mitigation measures, roughly a third of the total 432 assessments received a rating of "low," "nil," "negligible," or "not applicable." Public health and safety, recreation, energy and natural resources, and earth (such as soil erosion or compaction) are most likely to fall into this category. (Aerial recreation enthusiasts will be happy to know that they, too, land in this group.)
EFSEC also finds that with smart design and siting choices, most remaining possible impacts could be negligible or low. Two-thirds of the assessments received a rating with an impact range that includes low, nil, or negligible (for example: "low to high," or "negligible to moderate").
Of the 432 assessments, just four received a rating of at least "moderate" before mitigation. All four concerned Tribal cultural resources.
That tribal resources are the most likely to be affected by power lines makes another omission by EFSEC even more glaring than the climate one: the agency failed to consult with most Tribes before it released the draft PEIS.
The legislature e...

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