By Conor Bernstein
What’s happening in California, New York, and with the effort to rapidly transform and expand the nation’s grid paints a remarkably clear picture of ambition coming apart at the seams. The grid is increasingly short of power while costs are soaring.
Consider the high-voltage transmission buildout required to modernize the grid. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the U.S. needs to build as much as 10,000 miles a year of high-voltage transmission to enable a renewable-dominant grid. Last year, only 55 miles were brought into service.
Instead of ramping up high-voltage transmission construction, the U.S. is building less than it ever has. Meanwhile, spending on transmission has grown — now at $23 billion per year — but it’s not going to high-voltage interstate projects. It’s now focused on low-voltage in-territory projects that, while important, are not the power highways needed to bring low-cost renewable power to demand centers and help manage intermittency.
Consumer-crushing Costs in California
In California, power prices, already some of the most expensive in the country, have exploded over the past decade. For a state that has trumpeted its effort to lead the energy transition, California has trailblazed a path no one would want to follow.
According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, power prices for many Californians have jumped 82% in the past 10 years as utilities pass along costs to move to solar power, integrate batteries and bury transmission lines to fortify the grid from wildfires. For many Californians, the extraordinary cost of electricity is now untenable.
Working-class Californians are now paying 65% more for their monthly electricity bills than they’re paying for rent. Small businesses have to keep their thermostats at 85°F to stay afloat and retirees are now sending half of their social security checks straight to utilities each month just to manage power bills for mobile homes.
New York Models an Impossible Future
In 2019, New York took the bold and terribly unwise step of following in California’s footsteps and mandating a 100% zero-emission electricity system by 2040. It was an extraordinarily ambitious goal in 2019. Now, with electricity demand soaring, it’s looking all but impossible.
The state’s grid operator projected power demand to jump as much 90% over the next 20 years. Meeting that demand will require more than tripling existing generating capacity from 37 gigawatts (GW) today to as much as 130 GW by 2040. The grid operator also said the state will need between 20 and 40 GW of dispatchable emissions-free resources to replace 25 GW of fossil-fuel generation. Those resources could include long-duration batteries, small modular nuclear reactors, hydrogen-powered generators and fuel cells. Currently, none of those exist in commercial operation anywhere.
If California and New York are supposed to be leading the nation in the energy transition, an impossible-to-achieve and crushingly expensive future appears to be on the horizon.
Conor Bernstein is a spokesperson for the National Mining Association, the industry’s trade group based in Washington, D.C.
