White House wants a better electric grid, environmental reviews take a back seat

The White House announced a new initiative on Tuesday, May 28, to modernize the United States’ electrical grid in response to increasing reliability challenges. The current infrastructure, strained by the demand from emerging technologies and the ongoing transition to renewable energy sources, has struggled to keep pace. The current grid experiences frequent blackouts, brownouts and vulnerabilities during extreme weather events.

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“The initiative aims to bring together states, federal entities, and power sector stakeholders to help drive grid adaptation quickly and cost-effectively to meet the challenges and opportunities that the power sector faces in the twenty-first century,” the White House said in a statement.

As part of this modernization effort, 21 states joined forces with the federal government to enhance the nation’s electrical transmission capacity and reduce outages. These improvements will help the nation access huge amounts of previously unused power. More electricity from solar panels alone is currently being left waiting to get on the grid than the entire amount of power that is actually on it.

A key component of this plan involves a process known as reconductoring. The process entails replacing older transmission lines with new, higher-capacity ones. This upgrade will help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the U.S. electrical grid. The new lines have the potential to quadruple new transmission capacity by 2035.

However, modernizing the nation’s grid will likely require a substantial financial investment. Estimates for the project reach into the tens of billions of dollars. Negative environmental impacts are also associated with largescale reconductoring. Historically, the government addressed those concerns with extensive reviews, which have sometimes held projects up for years.

In a move to expedite the process, the Biden administration announced that the Department of Energy’s environmental review procedures for reconductoring projects will be simplified. This streamlined approach aims to accelerate the implementation of these critical upgrades but has raised concerns about potentially overlooking environmental impacts.