The NYT Editorial Board writes, to tap the potential of renewable energy
By Doug Sheridan
Doug Sheridan
The NYT Editorial Board writes, to tap the potential of renewable energy, the US needs to dramatically expand the electric grid between places with abundant wind and sunshine and places where people live and work. And it needs to happen fast.
The gov't and private sector are investing heavily in a historic shift to EVs, heating systems and factories, including hundreds of billions in federal spending approved as part of the IRA. But without new power lines, much of that electricity will continue to be generated by burning carbon.
Unless the US rapidly accelerates the construction of power lines, researchers at Princeton University estimate 80% of the potential environmental benefits of electrification will be squandered.
The US needs 47.3 TW-miles of new power lines by 2035, which would expand the current grid by 57%, the Energy Dept reported. A 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine arrived at a similar figure. To hit that target, the US needs to double the pace of power line construction.
The current grid was constructed over more than a century. Building what amounts to a new grid on a similar scale in a small fraction of that time is a daunting challenge. It will require tens of billions of dollars in financing, vast quantities of steel and aluminum and thousands of specialized workers.
But building is the easy part. What makes the target virtually impossible to hit is the byzantine approval process that typically includes separate reviews by every municipality and state through which a power line will pass, as well as a host of federal agencies.
In 2005, for instance, the largest power company in Arizona proposed to build a transmission line to carry electricity to its customers from a new wind farm in Wyoming. Last month, after 18 years of legal battles and hearings and revisions, the TransWest Express project was finally approved. It still won’t be completed until 2028 at the earliest.
To Sum It Up: Congress and the Biden admin have taken a series of steps toward ending the nation’s dependence on carbon. But the absence of a plan to build a new electric grid is a critical hole in that strategy. Without decisive action, they will waste a precious chance to limit climate change.
Our Take: So, after passing "historic" bills designed to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on everything from new battery factories to solar and wind farms to green hydrogen dreams—as well as other infrastructure supposedly needed to take us to a new green economy—we're likely going to realize only a fraction of the hoped-for emissions reduction. And it's all because politicians knowingly didn't include funds to expand the grid by 60% or pass legislation to speed the approval of large transmission projects. In the private sector, the decision-makers would be fired for such incompetence. In DC, they run for re-election claiming "there's still more work to do."