from Bloomberg The biggest impediment to the US achieving a cleaner power grid isn’t climate deniers or fossil-fuel lobbies; it’s a lack of transmission lines. The country badly needs more conduits to cart wind and solar energy…
An explosion in proposed clean energy ventures has overwhelmed the system for connecting new power sources to homes and businesses.
The energy transition poised for takeoff in the United States amid record investment in wind, solar and other low-carbon technologies is facing a serious obstacle: [….]
from Wapo. To tackle climate, experts say, environmentalists have to embrace big energy projects. Fast. By Shannon Osaka | September 2, 2022 For decades, environmentalists have made their mark by stopping things. Petroleum facilities that…
House Republicans are racing to pass an energy package this spring that would speed up the nation’s permitting process for new natural gas pipelines, wind turbines and other energy infrastructure projects. Democrats now have a…
By Bill Gates
My first job, in high school, was writing software for the entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest … something many people never thought about back then.
That’s no longer the case. Extreme weather events have made people aware of power grids—and how they can fail….
We need to upgrade our grid, build more high-voltage transmission lines [,,,]
The vast majority of newly-installed and planned energy projects in the U.S. consist of clean energy – solar and wind farms. But clean energy projects are getting stuck in “interconnection queues,” and some clean energy projects have been canceled owing to lengthy delays. Factors like an onerous permitting process could dramatically hamper America’s clean energy rollout and thus its ability to cut pollution fast enough to meet the country’s Paris commitments.
Editor’s Note: Executive Actions announced last month streamline the federal permitting processese. These changes will improve speed but are limited in scope and easily reversed by a future President. (That’s why CCL advocates for bipartisan permitting-reform legislation.)
Is this NIMBYism? “The organizers of the week-long festival worry a geothermal energy project could damage Nevada desert’s hot springs.”
Nevada’s Great Basin region found itself at the epicenter of the nation’s most pressing priorities: renewable energy, wildlife conservation and Indigenous rights. … This geothermal power plant could help meet Biden’s ambitious plan to run the U.S. power grid entirely on clean energy by 2035.
While the clean energy transition appears unstoppable, the speed with which it occurs is uncertain. Fully implementing the IRA is key to transitioning fast enough. But fully realizing the IRA’s benefits takes too long. And sometimes, it’s impossible. That is, unless we overcome local permitting barriers.
In the United States, enough renewable energy projects are backlogged right now to achieve a largely clean electric grid by 2030. But without urgent action, most are unlikely to get built.
Congress may be out this week, but Reps. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and Sean Casten (D-Ill.) are busy drafting a counterproposal to House Republicans’ plan to speed up the permitting process for energy projects.
Their forthcoming bill, dubbed the Clean Electricity Transmission Acceleration Act, seeks to accelerate …
