TWE Project: benefits for the country and local communities
The TransWest Express Transmission Project will deliver significant national and local benefits, including creating and sustaining jobs and helping utilities minimize consumers’ electricity costs.
Highlights
- Creates construction jobs
- Boosts demand for local products and services during construction
- Provides additional local tax revenues
- Increases stability, capacity, reliability of entire western power grid
- Gets more energy to the highest demand centers, freeing up more energy elsewhere
- Facilitates delivery of more renewable energy, contributing to national emissions reduction goals
- Provides California, Nevada and Arizona utilities with access to the west's most
cost-effective renewable energy supplies
Economic benefits
TransWest will pay property taxes in every state and county that the transmission line traverses, augmenting state and local government budgets. TransWest Express anticipates the purchase and delivery of construction materials and transmission towers will generate significant local sales and use tax revenue as well.
Further, the TWE Project will provide important new connectivity between the west's most cost-effective renewable energy supplies – generated by Wyoming's high-capacity wind farms – and the utilities in California, Nevada and Arizona that have mandates to provide their customers with more renewable power. This will help utilities minimize their customers' electricity bills and better manage their operational costs.
Environmental benefits
The TWE Project will deliver enough clean, sustainable energy to power more than 1.8 million homes in densely populated areas of the country, thereby reducing the need for these regions to depend on fossil-fuel electric generating sources. Among the environmental benefits of the TWE Project and the wind electricity it will carry:
- Reduce greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to taking 1.5 million cars from the road.
- Reduce greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to shutting down 1,062 MW of coal generation.
Employment opportunities
The owner’s engineer estimates that up to 1,000 construction jobs will be created for the duration of the three-year construction phase of the TWE Project, jobs that will follow the transmission line as it is built.
Estimated jobs over the three-year construction period:
| Type | Number |
| Direct construction jobs per year at peak | 675-1,050 |
| Direct construction jobs per year average | 300-450 |
| Indirect jobs in the project area | 1,000 |
| Indirect jobs nationally | 3,000-5,000 |
| Line maintenance jobs after project completion | 10-20 |
Additional jobs will be created to build the terminals/substations in Carbon County, Wyo., and Clark County, Nev.
Estimated jobs over the two-year construction period:
| Type | Number |
| Direct construction jobs per year at peak | 360-500 |
| Direct construction jobs per year average | 160-300 |
| Indirect jobs in the project area | 600 |
| Indirect jobs nationally | 2,000-4,000 over a 3-year period |
| Operations/maintenance jobs after project completion | 25-50 |
