The nation’s top energy regulator is drafting a plan to get more solar and wind power connected to the electric grid — an issue that Democrats also tried to address in Congress’ wrangling over the federal debt limit. But analysts worry that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s new plan won’t go far enough to ease an unprecedented backlog of projects. The independent agency has proposed an expedited approval process for the zero-carbon energy needed to transition the grid off fossil fuels. Critics contend, however, that it doesn’t meaningfully address the soaring cost of transmission improvements or a shortage of experienced engineers to process the increasing volume of connection requests, writes Miranda Willson. "They're making tweaks at the edges that are not going to get to the heart of this problem," Brett White, a regulatory expert with the energy company Pine Gate Renewables, told Miranda. Why this is a big deal
The backlog could imperil President Joe Biden’s goal of cutting power-sector emissions 80 percent by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions five years later. And without streamlined approvals for projects like cross-country power lines, the generous clean-energy incentives in Biden’s $396 billion climate law may only exacerbate the bottleneck. The country’s power system was designed to accommodate large, centralized power plants. But wind and solar infrastructure is dispersed and decentralized, requiring major transmission lines to reach populated areas. Citing and permitting can take years, to say nothing of the cost. Congress, meanwhile, is moving slowly on the issue. The deal the White House struck with Republicans this week to raise the debt ceiling included some provisions to speed up energy permitting, but left transmission improvements largely untouched (save for a two-year-long study on the issue). These worries are far from new
FERC first raised concerns about the then-emerging grid queue in 2007, citing an already large number of zero-carbon energy projects seeking to connect to the U.S. electricity network. More than 15 years later, the agency is still grappling with the issue — except now, the problem is worse, and the stakes are higher, Miranda writes. Over 2,000 gigawatts of solar, wind and battery storage projects are waiting to connect, according to the Energy Department. That’s more power than the country’s current generating capacity, and more than six times larger than the bottleneck was in 2014.
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