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For solar and wind to supply greater amounts of electricity in order to replace the coal, oil, and natural gas that are harming the planet, the United States will need a lot more transmission lines to carry renewable power from the nation’s sunniest and windiest places to big cities that use huge amounts of power.
The REPEAT Project led by Princeton University researchers reported that 80 percent of the potential carbon pollution cuts made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act could be lost if the U.S. fails to accelerate the build-out of its electric power grid.
As Sammy Roth writes in the Los Angeles Times' Boiling Point newsletter, California offers a case study of the challenging headwinds for adding more renewable power to the grid. A state law requires 90 percent clean energy by 2035 and 100 percent by 2045, milestones that will require billions of dollars in investment to build new power lines and upgrade existing wires. Despite the imperative to build more transmission lines in order to bring more clean energy onto the power grid, it's a tough sell to get consumers and utilities to want to pay for them; investments will likely be funded by increased utility bills at a time when electricity costs are already rising rapidly, straining cash-strapped consumers. In addition, the process of approving long distance transmission lines with some routes traversing multiple states and hundreds of landowners can take a decade or more.
New podcast: Making conservation more inclusive
Kate and Aaron are joined by the co-chairs of the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, a new group that came together to ensure conservation benefits marginalized and overly burdened communities. Nse Witherspoon, executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, and Mark Magaña, founder and CEO of GreenLatinos, talk about their coalition’s 2023 policy agenda as well as funding opportunities for groups that are working toward a more just and equitable conservation movement on the latest episode of The Landscape.
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They start looking at their pen pals as somebody that they can become friends with, and somebody that they can share experiences with. After learning and sharing experiences, it becomes a little easier to wrap your head around sharing water.”
