The Real Challenge for the Green New Deal Isn’t Politics

Earlier this year, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey introduced a resolution to the US Congress that sought to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and eventually power the the country with nothing but renewable energy. Known as the Green New Deal, the plan is as ambitious as it is fraught with political roadblocks from both sides of the aisle. But even if the Green New Deal can find support in Congress, it will still have to grapple with its biggest political, economic, and technical challenge: transmission lines. Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of miles of transmission lines. The fundamental challenge with integrating solar and wind energy into the US electric grid is that the areas that are best for generating these types of clean energy are usually very remote. The Great Plains is the place to harvest wind energy, and the Mojave Desert gets sun 360 days a year, but these locations are hundreds—if not thousands—of miles away from America’s biggest cities, where clean energy is needed most. Piping this energy from wind and solar farms means building more interstate high-voltage transmission lines, which are expensive, ugly, and loud. Unsurprisingly, most people don’t want transmission lines near their homes, so new builds often face stiff political resistance from locals. The design and management of the US electric grid itself doesn’t help. The national grid comprises three main regions—the Eastern, Western, and Texas interconnections—and each of these regional grids operates independently of the others. Within the three interconnections, there are a number of regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, which are nonprofit entities that manage the transmission and generation of electricity by utilities in their region. The Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency within the DOE, are responsible for identifying when and where new transmission is needed, but it’s up to the states to pick the patch of dirt where the transmission lines are built, while the utilities within the states decide who will pay for them. Even in the complex world of energy policy, placing new transmission lines is a gordian knot...MORE