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The urgent need to build transmission infrastructure at dramatic pace, scale, and geographic scope is clear. To decarbonize the power sector, we’ll have to physically rebuild the grid once-over in the coming decades to connect and facilitate a hopeful explosion in new renewable generation capacity across our continental country. We will have to accomplish this as electricity demand grows, including on account of decarbonizing sectors such as buildings, transportation, and industrial production through electrification. Given the stakes of grid balancing, this task is akin to building and starting to operate a new beating heart and wider cardiovascular system, all while keeping the old one from failing amid surgery. Coordination and proactive planning of grid buildout will be key.
Despite the undeniable public benefits, investment in the grid has been stagnating, if not declining. A Department of Energy study found that annual net investment in the grid, as measured by new miles of line, was actually negative on average between 2016 and 2020. Some have faulted the National Environmental Policy Act for this underinvestment, while others have blamed anti-social NIMBYs, both of which, but especially combined, can thwart projects at the permitting stage.
The reality is more complicated and implicates the basic governance of the transmission system. The grid in the United States is owned, operated, and planned largely by a highly fragmented set of privately owned utilities and, in some places, their nonprofit associations, which are regulated at the federal and state level. Transmission owners do not propose and build transmission lines unless they are profitable for their business, which is not guaranteed most of the time. Indeed, new lines can cost transmission owners profits by creating a larger pool of power supply and reducing the energy sales and pricing power of their generation affiliates.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has repeatedly attempted to prod utilities to do more by mandating regional planning procedures. FERC announced its latest regulatory initiative, called Order 1920, last month, and it requires transmission owners to undertake long-range regional planning that considers an array of public benefits, including lower energy prices and enhanced system reliability. In particular, the rule alleviates disputes over investment cost allocation. But stronger planning procedures can hardly ensure that private utilities will actually invest in needed lines. Indeed, FERC’s serial attempts on this front have so far been a failure.
As this FERC activity suggests, the grid is already subject to great public regulation, but this regulatory architecture still falls well short of the public control necessary to treat the grid as a vital common resource whose transformation must be proactively planned and precisely delivered at the system-level. Through public planning and development, we can overcome this structural fragmentation and counteract private utilities’ low propensity to investment across the transmission system. We need a centralized system of public planning, funding, and construction of transmission facilities. We need to nationalize the grid.
The benefits of grid expansion are manifold and go well beyond just the functionality of decarbonization. More connections between states and regions can lower the price of electricity and improve reliability, which will become an increasingly pressing issue in the face of further climate destabilization. And yet our transmission system consists of regional and subregional grids “that operate like jealous petty potentates, resisting stronger links that would allow renewable energy to flow across regional boundaries,” in the words of the New York Timeseditorial board. Projects founder over disputes between utilities over how to distribute costs, while other necessary new additions are never proposed in the first place. This is a structural problem that leads to quantitative underinvestment and qualitative poor coordination of investment across the balkanized system.
The public pays for investments in the electricity system, whether through taxes or consumer electricity bills in monopoly serviced systems down the line. Public investment in critical infrastructure is cheaper for the public than private investment due to the lower costs of debt financing or direct access to the U.S. Treasury for public agencies. These entities are also free from the imperative to maximize shareholder returns and pay dividends. Public investment is more flexible and can adopt a system-wide approach, as opposed to one blinkered at the level of the project. Instead of piecemeal line extensions, the grid can be expanded in a methodical and holistic fashion in accordance with social need.
Public power is firmly established in the United States. Public agencies such as the federal Tennessee Valley Authority and state-owned New York Power Authority generate and transmit power. In nearly the entire contiguous United States west of the Mississippi River, three federal power administrations own transmission lines and can construct new ones. Congress should set up and fund federal authorities across the country to build the power grid we desperately need, coordinating with each other and through federal level planning, and working with, and when needed against, the current assemblage of private utilities.
The Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific Northwest offers a good model of governance. It is led by a single administrator appointed by the Secretary of Energy. This official has the broad authority to set rates on wholesale power and transmission and develop the regional grid. But these important decisions can only be made after close consultation with retail and wholesale customers, Native American tribes, elected officials, and environmental groups and are reviewed by FERC. This system ensures efficient, publicly accountable management of the grid.
Given the tight timeline we face to deliver on critical decarbonization pillars, one might ask, why experiment with a publicly led approach? We might stoke private utility backlash and weaken or slow the broader project of cleaning up the power supply. But private utilities have had decades to deliver a modern grid and failed. Because of the pressing need to decarbonize and fortify resilience against entrenched climate instability, the necessity of building state capacity is a sober reality. We cannot begin to build necessary state capacity without first acknowledging this necessity and acting in light of it.
North America’s power grid is called the “world’s largest machine” because it is a complex physical infrastructure that must be in perfect balance every second. Our homes, places of work and leisure, and increasingly vehicles are all plugged into the grid. Preserving modern living standards—and an inhabitable planet—requires expanding and rationally operating this common resource. This social undertaking is too important to be entrusted to private corporations.
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And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.
1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.
3. Benton County, Washington – Sorry Scout Clean Energy, but the Yakima Nation is coming for Horse Heaven.
Here’s what else we’re watching right now…
In Connecticut, officials have withdrawn from Vineyard Wind 2 — leading to the project being indefinitely shelved.
In Indiana, Invenergy just got a rejection from Marshall County for special use of agricultural lands.
In Kansas, residents in Dickinson County are filing legal action against county commissioners who approved Enel’s Hope Ridge wind project.
In Kentucky, a solar project was actually approved for once – this time for the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.
In North Carolina, Davidson County is getting a solar moratorium.
In Pennsylvania, the town of Unity rejected a solar project. Elsewhere in the state, the developer of the Newton 1 solar project is appealing their denial.
In South Carolina, a state appeals court has upheld the rejection of a 2,300 acre solar project proposed by Coastal Pine Solar.
In Washington State, Yakima County looks like it’ll keep its solar moratorium in place.
And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.
2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.
3. Biden’s parting words – The Biden administration has finished its long-awaited guidance for the IRA’s tech-neutral electricity credit (which barely changed) and hydrogen production credit.
A conversation with J. Timmons Roberts, executive director of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network
This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful research conducted on anti-offshore wind opposition networks. This work is a must-read for anyone who wants to best understand how the anti-renewables movement functions and why it may be difficult to stop it from winning out.
So with Trump 2.0 on the verge of banning offshore wind outright, I decided to ask Roberts what he thinks developers should be paying attention to at this moment. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Is the anti-renewables movement a political force the country needs to reckon with?
Absolutely. In my opinion it’s been unfortunate for the environmental groups, the wind development, the government officials, climate scientists – they’ve been unwilling to engage directly with those groups. They want to keep a very positive message talking about the great things that come with wind and solar. And they’ve really left the field open as a result.
I think that as these claims sit there unrefuted and naive people – I don’t mean naive in a negative sense but people who don’t know much about this issue – are only hearing the negative spin about renewables. It’s a big problem.
When you say renewables developers aren’t interacting here – are you telling me the wind industry is just letting these people run roughshod?
I’ve seen no direct refutation in those anti-wind Facebook groups, and there’s very few environmentalists or others. People are quite afraid to go in there.
But even just generally. This vast network you’ve tracked – have you seen a similar kind of counter mobilization on the part of those who want to build these wind farms offshore?
There’s some mobilization. There’s something called the New England for Offshore Wind coalition. There’s some university programs. There’s some other oceanographic groups, things like that.
My observation is that they’re mostly staff organizations and they’re very cautious. They’re trying to work as a coalition. And they’re going as slow as their most cautious member.
As someone who has researched these networks, what are you watching for in the coming year? Under the first year of Trump 2.0?
Yeah I mean, channeling my optimistic and Midwestern dad, my thought is that there may be an overstepping by the Trump administration and by some of these activists. The lack of viable alternative pathways forward and almost anti-climate approaches these groups are now a part of can backfire for them. Folks may say, why would I want to be supportive of your group if you’re basically undermining everything I believe in?
What do you think developers should know about the research you have done into these networks?
I think it's important for deciding bodies and the public, the media and so on, to know who they’re hearing when they hear voices at a public hearing or in a congressional field hearing. Who are the people representing? Whose voice are they advancing?
It’s important for these actors that want to advance action on climate change and renewables to know what strategies and the tactics are being used and also know about the connections.
One of the things you pointed out in your research is that, yes, there are dark money groups involved in this movement and there are outside figures involved, but a lot of this sometimes is just one person posts something to the internet and then another person posts something to the internet.
Does that make things harder when it comes to addressing the anti-renewables movement?
Absolutely. Social media’s really been devastating for developing science and informed, rational public policymaking. It’s so easy to create a conspiracy and false information and very slanted, partial information to shoot holes at something as big as getting us off of fossil fuels.
Our position has developed as we understand that indeed these are not just astro-turf groups created by some far away corporation but there are legitimate concerns – like fishing, where most of it is based on certainty – and then there are these sensationalized claims that drive fears. That fear is real. And it’s unfortunate.
Anything else you’d really like to tell our readers?
I didn’t really choose this topic. I feel like it really got me. It was me and four students sitting in my conference room down the hall and I said, have you heard about this group that just started here in Rhode Island that’s making these claims we should investigate? And students were super excited about it and have really been the leaders.