Here we have yet another warning that the United States is woefully unprepared for what climate change is going to do to our society. While the TCPs in the House spend most of their time and millions of our dollars trying to find some way to embarrass President Biden and his family, and the Senate TCPs block help for Ukraine, the infrastructure, of bridges, roads, electric grid, and airports built from the 1920s to the 1960s age and falter. We are so unprepared that it is going to produce great misery and deaths, and yet you hardly see it mentioned by corporate news on television, state legislatures, particularly those controlled by the TCPs can’t be bothered, and it is hardly a factor in the 2024 election in November. It took me several Google searches and 20 minutes to find this piece in Time Magazine.
Transmission lines exit the plant at Pacific Gas and Electric’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the only operating nuclear powered plant in California. Credit: Los Angeles Times / Getty
Michael Polsky, the founder and CEO of renewable energy developer Invenergy, has earned a reputation as a renewable energy pioneer. His company, founded in 2001, has more than 200 clean energy projects across the world completed or in progress.
When we spoke this week at this year’s Aspen Ideas: Climate conference, he could have taken a bit of a victory lap. But instead he was eager to deliver a warning: without a concerted effort to fix its electric grid the U.S. may soon face electric reliability issues, not to mention challenges meeting its climate goals. “People don’t realize how fragile the grid is,” he said.
Polsky is far from alone. In the year and a half since the passage of the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), energy experts have called for regulatory reforms to help fix the grid—think of expediting permits for transmission lines that deliver electricity from power plants to cities and speeding up the process of connecting new power plants to the grid. A 2022 […]
Most often mainstream analysis of needed change in the electrical grid is from the viewpoint of maintaining dominance by large energy corporations in the market. Resilience in face of climate weirding/disasters and changing demand and technology is overlooked.
Highly dispersed and locally owned, interconnected solar. wind and battery grids are more resilient to disaster and much more productive economically for the local communities.
Pierre Landau
on Monday, March 18, 2024 at 6:44 am
Also rarely discussed is the math of EV rapid chargers. How many highway rest stops where one might need to charge >100 cars simultaneously are positioned near transmission lines?
Most often mainstream analysis of needed change in the electrical grid is from the viewpoint of maintaining dominance by large energy corporations in the market. Resilience in face of climate weirding/disasters and changing demand and technology is overlooked.
Highly dispersed and locally owned, interconnected solar. wind and battery grids are more resilient to disaster and much more productive economically for the local communities.
Also rarely discussed is the math of EV rapid chargers. How many highway rest stops where one might need to charge >100 cars simultaneously are positioned near transmission lines?