Community Benefits Snapshot: North Plains Connector Transmission Line Community Engagement and Benefits

Highlights

North Plains Connector is an approximately 420-mile interregional electricity transmission line that will be built from eastern Montana to central North Dakota. The line will connect the western and eastern electric grids and three transmission planning regions, making it one of the most impactful lines in development today. The project has been praised by both renewable energy advocates and local stakeholders for its landowner-first approach to stakeholder engagement, community-led granting structures, use of federal grants to bolster communities and local employment initiatives.

Context

About the Project and Involved Stakeholders

The North Plains Connector (NPC) is a 420-mile, 525 kilovolt high-voltage direct current transmission line running from Colstrip, Montana, to St. Anthony and Center, North Dakota. North Plains Connector LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Grid United, is the developer of NPC. Grid United is an independent traƒnsmission company, an entity that designs, constructs, and partially or fully owns the transmission facilities. NPC LLC includes Grid United and its various partners, most notably ALLETE, Inc.

At an approximately $3.2 billion investment, NPC is a key transmission line for the region and the country at large. It will connect the western and eastern electricity grids, adding 3,000 megawatts of bi-directional transfer capacity — more than double the current value — between the two systems. More transfer capacity between the eastern and western grids, which have been developed separately and run at different frequencies, will result in reliability and economic benefits for customers across the country. An analysis of the line’s reliability benefits done by Astrapé Consulting revealed that the line will add more than 3,000 megawatts of Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC), — a key measure of a resource’s ability to prevent electricity shortages — to Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) collectively. The line will also facilitate additional trading between MISO, SPP and western markets.

North Plains Connector Transmission Line

The project has involved hundreds of stakeholders across Montana and North Dakota. Stakeholders include not only directly affected landowners, but also over 23 Tribal Nations who have had a cultural presence along the line’s route. Other stakeholders with economic interests in the line include county governments and utilities. As of January 2025, 75% of the NPC’s capacity has been obligated to utilities, such as Allete, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Portland General Electric, through memoranda of understanding. Finally, nearly $800 million has been granted to the state of Montana and municipalities in North Dakota to support NPC through the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership (GRIP) Program and Transmission Siting and Economic Development (TSED) funds, making federal and state governments significant stakeholders in NPC as well.  

The NPC transmission project was announced in 2022 and is currently in the planning and development phase. NPC LLC began permitting applications and regulatory filings in 2024, with approvals expected in 2026. Construction is slated to commence in 2028, and the line should be operational by 2032. 

Engagement

Though NPC LLC has engaged various state and federal stakeholders to develop the project, this snapshot primarily focuses on its engagement with the local community. The authors conducted 18 interviews across Montana and North Dakota with landowners, county commissioners, leaders of Tribal Nations, state regulators and legislators, and community development non-profit employees to assess the local engagement efforts and benefits of NPC.

Landowner engagement for NPC began in 2022 after conducting initial constraint analyses (engineering, biological, existing rights-of-way, archeological/cultural sites) and receiving feedback from federal and state agencies. With a 370-mile preliminary route in hand, NPC LLC’s development team began holding public meetings and negotiating with landowners along the proposed route. This route, however, was never expected to match the final position of the line. NPC LLC refers to its stakeholder engagement process as a “landowner-first approach” because of the time and flexibility given to each landowner impacted by the line. Each landowner met directly with members of the NPC LLC team to find the least impactful area for transmission development. The result of this is, as one local advocate put it, a “zigzagging” line that is less efficient, but socially optimal. Today, the project has added 50 miles to its proposed route, in large part due to these consent-based siting negotiations with landowners.

Landowner negotiations also took place through collective bargaining. A group of landowners representing 40-50% of the proposed right-of-way, “The Pro North Plains Connector Landowner Group,” formed to negotiate as a group for better easement leases and specific landowner demands. What could have led to costly conflict instead benefited both the landowners and NPC LLC. The landowners were able to secure expert representation from a Wyoming lawyer who specializes in transmission easements because they pooled their resources, while the developer saved time and transaction costs by only having to negotiate with one counterparty.

NPC LLC has also held recurring public meetings for members of the community to learn more about the project and ask questions. These ongoing meetings go beyond Montana and North Dakota’s legal requirements for public engagement and occur quarterly, according to county commissioners in the region. One landowner commented that sometimes NPC LLC hosts meetings simply because they haven’t had one in a while. These meetings helped build trust and understanding within the host communities, according to county commissioners, landowners and developers interviewed. 

Finally, NPC LLC did extensive voluntary tribal engagement with over 23 Tribal Nations across Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. While the line does not directly pass through tribal lands, it will have significant implications for energy development on nearby tribal lands (see “generation opportunities” section below). Additionally, the developers hired tribal cultural specialists during survey work along the line route to identify and document places of cultural importance.

Benefits 

Key benefits of the NPC transmission line include:

Legal and Expected Benefits:

• Taxes: Taxes can be the most valuable and longest lasting benefit a merchant transmission project provides to local communities. The centrally assessed nature of transmission taxation, however, makes it difficult to ascertain expected local revenues during and after construction. Aside from one county commissioner who was familiar with the Montana tax code, all other local stakeholders interviewed in this study did not know how to estimate expected revenues from the NPC line, nor were they comfortable providing a ballpark figure.
• Foregoing eminent domain: NPC LLC made the decision to not use eminent domain along the route and instead chose to acquire necessary land from property owners through negotiations and voluntary agreements. NPC LLC made this decision even though it would be easier to invoke eminent domain on NPC than in many other situations because developers do not need Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity approval to use eminent domain in North Dakota. The company’s decision to avoid using eminent domain, at least until the point of this writing, has been praised by local stakeholders across the route. Three county commissioners interviewed about the line specifically indicated that the use of eminent domain would likely have shifted their support for the project to opposition.
• Job creation and training: NPC LLC projects that it will employ 800 workers during NPC’s construction. Additionally, the company has proposed supporting commercial drivers license (CDL) and line worker training programs at Highlands College in Butte, Montana and Bismarck State College in North Dakota. The company is also working with United Tribes Technical College, a university serving Native American youth in Bismarck, to develop certificate programs in environmental inspection, tribal survey and monitoring, and CDLs. These kinds of jobs will be necessary for the line’s construction and maintenance, providing short-term and long-term employment opportunities for local and Native stakeholders impacted by the line.

Procedural Benefits:

• Honoring siting requests: Stakeholders most appreciated NPC LLC’s willingness to be flexible on the route. As noted in the engagement section, the route has added 50 miles to its original length to date, a roughly 14% increase. Nearly all alterations came at the request of individual landowners who wanted the line moved to less impactful areas on their land. According to nearly every stakeholder interviewed, NPC LLC’s willingness to not only listen and engage early, but follow through on local priorities has paid dividends in reducing opposition to the project. 

Community Grants:

• Community foundation grants: NPC LLC has distributed $2.1 million in North Dakota and $1.8 million in Montana in community grants over the past three years. In both cases, NPC LLC elected to let community foundations distribute the donations rather than the company do it itself. The North Dakota Community Foundation, a non-profit with longstanding ties to western North Dakota, oversaw the distribution of funds. The organization helped communities along the line form committees to choose grantee organizations and provide them with technical assistance. The committees themselves ultimately choose the beneficiaries with no input from NPC LLC nor Grid United. The grantmaking process works similarly in Montana.
• Small grants: NPC LLC, like many projects, has offered small donations at local events in an effort to show support for the community. For example, NPC LLC bought the prize bull at a local county fair in North Dakota at a price one community member estimated at, “three times its market value,” then donated the meat back to the county’s local food pantry.

Transmission Siting and Economic Development (TSED) Funds:

• TSED is a $760 million program funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), designed to facilitate the siting and permitting of critical transmission. With the grant-writing support of NPC LLC, communities in both Montana and North Dakota have received over $62 million in grants from this program. The Montana Department of Commerce won a $47.5 million grant from the DOE that will be distributed to the rural counties of Rosebud, Custer, and Fallon and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe for a host of community improvement projects, such as roads, sewers, emergency services, and projects related to workforce and infrastructure development. In North Dakota, the towns of Mott and Amidon received $15 million in TSED funds for a community center and fire station, respectively. These funds would not have been available to these communities were they not co-located with NPC.

Locally Owned Generation Opportunities:

• New markets for locally owned generation: A positive consequence of NPC is that it will enable locally owned generation to connect to new markets. NPC will help the Standing Rock Sioux build and export wind energy on their tribal lands, which will be the single-largest revenue source for the tribe. SAGE Development Authority is a power authority owned by the Standing Rock Sioux that is developing wind energy on their reservation. It is currently able to export 235 MW of wind energy; with development of the NPC, it will be able to develop and export an additional 165 MW of wind.

Strengths: 

NPC is a nationally important transmission project that has the potential to bring significant economic and reliability benefits to consumers across the West and Great Plains while accelerating the interconnection of renewables to the grid. The purpose of this snapshot, however, is to highlight the project’s strengths as they relate to engaging with and providing tangible benefits to communities. An overarching strength of this project has been the developer’s effort to secure wide stakeholder buy-in prior to seeking regulatory approval. Facets of this effort are described below: 

1) Intensive and intentional landowner engagement:  NPC LLC went above and beyond the legal requirements for community engagement. Their early, and equally  important, continued engagement with local community stakeholders helped reduce uncertainty, promote trust and mitigate opposition. Even more, the willingness of the developer to modify the route to accommodate landowner preferences resulted in a socially optimal route tailored to the communities’ needs. Though it produced a route that is not as economically efficient, NPC LLC did far more to honor the siting requests of landowners than industry standards dictate.

2) Developing local credibility through trusted philanthropy: NPC LLC worked with established philanthropic non-profits in both Montana and North Dakota to help distribute local investments. As a result, the company benefited from additional credibility, effective distribution of millions of dollars across a few communities, and continual positive press from local news outlets. While it is impossible to know if NPC LLC’s philanthropy would have been as well received had the company granted funds directly, several stakeholders interviewed emphasized that the local philanthropic partners improved community perception of the grants. Regardless, it is notable that NPC LLC made the effort to give communities a high level of autonomy to decide how grants were distributed.

3) Leveraging federal funds for local impact: To augment its private funding, NPC LLC leveraged its own technical expertise in federal grant writing to help state and local governments apply for federal grants. As of the writing of this snapshot, all federal disbursements of the Inflation Reduction Act grants have been paused. If the funding is ultimately distributed by the federal government, it will sustain continued local investment over the next several years, which is directly attributable to the project’s developers.

4) Tribal engagement for greater equity and economic opportunities: NPC LLC voluntarily engaged with more than 20 Tribal partners during its development, securing significant benefits for the Northern Cheyenne and Standing Rock Sioux tribes and making efforts to avoid damaging the cultural sites of many others. The construction of NPC will not only allow more Native-owned renewables to interconnect, it may also spur widespread transmission development across Great Plains Indian country. A National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) that touches the NPC’s route before running south through Standing Rock Sioux lands to South Dakota and Nebraska was just advanced to the final round. If approved, it will ease permitting burdens and provide funding for transmission development within the corridor. The existence of NPC, which has a large capacity and connects several markets, will only make these potential lines more economically viable and may have been a consideration in advancing this NIETC to the final round.

Challenges and Gaps

High upfront investments into socially optimal routes and community engagement is unproven and requires patient capital: NPC LLC made a strategic choice to invest more capital and time into the early development of its project than is typical with the hope that these early investments – designed to improve community relations and ease regulatory approvals – will ultimately save the project money in avoided litigation and regulatory delays. NPC LLC has added 50 miles to the line’s route to accommodate landowners, potentially increasing line costs by $35-$50 million in the process. The company also made over $5 million in donation commitments to local communities at the outset of the project and has delayed applying for state regulatory approval and environmental permits until nearly all the required easements have been signed. This approach differs from many developers, who opt to pursue site control and regulatory approval simultaneously.

While advocates of this approach argue that high upfront investment will reduce time and legal expenses, this has yet to be proven. In fact, the high upfront costs of frequent community engagement and route alterations may increase the overall cost of the project in the end. Furthermore, this approach requires, as one developer put it, “patient capital.” For developers who rely on ratepayers to fund line development, high upfront costs may be considered too risky or undesirable by those who will inevitably bear the cost of the line. Though it is yet to be seen whether this financial plan will pay out in the end, what is clear is that NPC LLC and Grid United’s approach has significantly reduced the amount of opposition projects in Montana and North Dakota have historically had to battle.