President Joe Biden is casting his debt ceiling deal with Republicans as a win for clean energy. But one of the greatest hurdles to greening the U.S. electric grid — transmission — was largely unaddressed by the agreement to raise the country’s borrowing limit. The final deal, which Congress must still pass, mandates a single study on the issue of connecting solar and wind power to urban areas. But studies take time — and experts say the U.S. needs to double its rate of transmission expansion to meet Biden’s pledge to transition to a net-zero grid by 2035. The debt compromise includes some provisions to speed up energy permitting, such as a one-year deadline for producing environmental assessments and a two-year maximum for environmental impact statements. But without significant improvements in transmission, the nation could fail to meet its climate goals, said Jason Grumet, CEO of American Clean Power Association. “It is critical that Congress build upon these initial steps,” Grumet said in a statement. Kicking the electric can: While lawmakers across the political spectrum agree transmission infrastructure needs improvement, Republicans say they are wary of Democrats’ approach. That’s why an electric grid provision from Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) ultimately failed to make it into the debt agreement. The proposal would have effectively required regions across the country to build more transmission lines so they could transfer electricity among their power networks during times of stress. The aim was to boost resilience and the spread of more clean energy. Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who helped negotiate the fiscal deal, told Nidhi Prakash that the issue is not well enough understood in Congress — hence, the study. South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan, a GOP member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, also told POLITICO last week that he told Graves to “not give in” to the Democrats on transmission because Republicans are “just sticking our toe in the water” on the issue. In the meantime, the transmission clock is ticking. Abe Silverman, who studies barriers to clean energy growth at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said the worst-case scenario is that adding the study into the debt ceiling deal delays any real action. “We need thousands of miles of new transmission by the early 2030s. That’s going to take at least five years to permit and at least another five years to build,” he told Nidhi. “So we’re in 2025 before we even get started.” Read more about it: What’s in and what’s out of the debt limit agreement.
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