The only reason climate alarmists are pushing to rebuild our energy grid is to accommodate wind and solar power. Our existing grid worked just fine with traditional energy generation, even as it required maintenance to keep it operational. The “new” grid must mix with sporadic on-again, off-again sources of energy. As the “new” grid is formed, traditional energy transmission is a secondary consideration.
This article is very clear from the climate change perspective: “But as humanity responds to global warming, renewable, zero-carbon sources of energy, especially wind and solar energy, are replacing fossil fuels. That requires a new transmission grid.“⁃ TN Editor
Most of the U.S. electric grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, over 70% of the U.S. electricity grid is more than 25 years old, and that aging system is vulnerable to increasingly intense storms.
Also, the electric infrastructure in the U.S. was built to bring energy from where fossil fuels are burned to where the energy will be used.
But as humanity responds to global warming, renewable, zero-carbon sources of energy, especially wind and solar energy, are replacing fossil fuels. That requires a new transmission grid.
The network of transmission lines that carry electricity across the U.S. is old and not set up to meet the anticipated demand for clean energy sources like wind and solar.
Currently, electricity generation results in 32% of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, mostly from burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. Those fuels are transported and burned where electricity is needed.
But inexpensive emissions-free sources of energy, like solar and wind, are only abundant in places where the sun shines or wind blows, and that’s not necessarily close to homes and businesses. Moreover, demand for electricity is going to rise as fossil fuels are gradually replaced for a whole host of other uses, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps.
Keeping the lights on and the air clean will require a lot of new transmission.
That creates “vulnerability,” the U.S. Department of Energy said in an announcement of an initiative included in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to catalyze investment in the nation’s grid.
In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, U.S. electricity customers were without power for slightly longer than seven hours on average, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. More than five of those seven hours were during what the EIA calls “major events,” including snowstorms, hurricanes, and wildfires. That’s a significant rise from the three-to-four-hour average for outages between 2013 (the first year the data is available) and 2016, and the main culprit is extreme weather.
“Extreme weather events like the Dixie Wildfire, Hurricane Ida, and the 2021 Texas Freeze have made it clear that America’s existing energy infrastructure will not endure the continuing impacts of extreme weather events spurred by climate change,” the U.S. Department of Energy said.
Transmission infrastructure lasts between 50 and 80 years, according to a 2021 presentation from the advisory firm, the Brattle Group. Replacing transmission infrastructure that’s reaching its age limit is likely to costing an estimated $10 billion a year, according to the Brattle Group analysis.
In addition to the increasing age, the location of the existing transmission lines is a problem.
Fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas are typically transported by railroads or pipelines, then burned in power plants near cities.
The electricity industry in the U.S. grew up through a patchwork of local utility companies meeting local demand, Rob Gramlich, the founder of Grid Strategies, told CNBC. The system of transmission lines in the U.S. was built to serve that model of energy generation.
Clean energy sources, like wind and solar, do not release greenhouse gas emissions, but the energy generated must be moved from where the wind and sun are strongest to where the electricity is actually used.
That’s especially true for tapping into the highest quality of wind energy, explained Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins, a macro-scale energy systems engineer.
“Wind turbine power scales with the wind speed cubed.That means the best wind power sites are eight times more productive than the worst ones, versus just twice as productive for solar,” Jenkins said.
“That greater degree of variation in wind power potential means we need to build wind farms where it’s really windy, and that tends to not be where too many people live! So wind power development is a big driver of expanded transmission needs,” Jenkins told CNBC.
It’s easier to build solar panels close to where they are needed, but “not so for wind farms,” Jenkins said.
The combination of an aging infrastructure that needs costly upgrades and an energy grid doesn’t go where clean — and cheap — forms of renewable energy are located is “unfortunately a double whammy for consumers,” Gramlich told CNBC.
Patrick Wood is a leading and critical expert on Sustainable Development, Green Economy, Agenda 21, 2030 Agenda and historic Technocracy. He is the author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation (2015) and co-author of Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II (1978-1980) with the late Antony C. Sutton.
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