There is no single entity in charge of organizing the grid, the way the federal government oversaw the development of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and ‘60s. But the problems start with planning - or rather, a lack of planning. There are enormous challenges to building that much transmission, including convoluted permitting processes and potential opposition from local communities. Both maps show utility-scale renewable projects, but do not include distributed installations, like rooftop solar. Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory | The 2035 map is based on the “All Options” path from NREL’s 100% Clean Electricity by 2035 Study. Transmission capacity would need to more than double in just over a decade: To understand the scale of what’s needed, compare today’s renewable energy and transmission system to one estimate of what it would take to reach the Biden administration’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity generation by 2035. To make the plan work, the nation would need thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines - large power lines that would span multiple grid regions. That would mean building thousands of wind turbines across the gusty Great Plains and acres of solar arrays across the South, creating clean, low-cost electricity to power homes, vehicles and factories.īut many spots with the best sun and wind are far from cities and the existing grid. Tapping into the nation’s vast supplies of wind and solar energy would be one of the cheapest ways to cut the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet, studies have found. The last map shows how those three regions are further divided into dozens of regional operators and local utilities.Īmerica’s fragmented electric grid, which was largely built to accommodate coal and gas plants, is becoming a major obstacle to efforts to fight climate change.
The second map shows how those lines are physically broken up into three grids - the Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections - with only a few ties between them. The first one shows all the power lines across the United States.
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