Sponsors (4)
The bill aims to speed and lower the cost of moving more clean energy by using existing highway and rail corridors and coordinated planning, but it trades off local construction impacts, potential added costs to ratepayers/taxpayers, reduced community control and complex permitting, plus some security and mitigation challenges.
Homeowners, businesses, and energy consumers may pay lower and more stable electricity prices as new transmission capacity and reduced congestion enable access to lower‑cost generation.
Utilities and grid operators can deploy transmission faster and with lower incremental costs by co‑locating lines in existing highway/rail rights‑of‑way and using clearer siting data and options.
Rural communities and the broader grid benefit from greater renewable energy integration because easier siting and HVDC/long‑distance options make it easier to move clean generation to demand centers.
Homeowners, taxpayers, and ratepayers could face higher bills because building, permitting, and required mitigation (environmental, rail safety, EM interference) can add substantial costs.
Residents near highways or rail corridors (often rural or local homeowners) may experience construction and ongoing local impacts — noise, traffic, visual changes, land‑use disruption, and maintenance disturbances.
Local communities, state agencies, utilities, and railroads may see reduced public input, competing corridor uses, and complex property/permitting negotiations that could raise conflicts and delay projects despite planning efforts.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires DOE to study co‑locating high‑voltage transmission in highway and rail rights‑of‑way and report findings and data to Congress within three years.
Official title: To direct the Secretary of Energy to conduct a study on using highway rights-of-way and rail rights-of-way as locations on which to construct high-voltage transmission infrastructure, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 5, 2026 by Kevin Mullin · Last progress February 5, 2026
Requires the Department of Energy to study the benefits, costs, and practical challenges of siting high‑voltage electric transmission lines in existing highway and rail rights‑of‑way, including abandoned rail corridors and National Highway System routes. The study must evaluate technical configurations (AC, DC, overhead, underground, multi‑terminal DC), land and permitting implications, environmental and rail‑operation impacts, financing mechanisms, and develop an interagency action plan and stakeholder resources. The Secretary of Energy must consult DOT, FERC, DOE national laboratories, utilities, and rail carriers, publish study elements as they are completed, and submit a machine‑readable report and supporting data to Congress and post it online within three years of enactment (with limited national‑security redactions allowed).