Why America’s outdated energy grid is a climate problem
Transmission towers are shown on June 15, 2021 in Houston, Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which controls approximately 90% of the power in Texas, has requested Texas residents to conserve power through Friday as temperatures surge in the state.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
This story is part of CNBC’s “Transmission Troubles” series, an inside look at why the aging electrical grid in the U.S. is struggling to keep up, how it’s being improved, and why it’s so vital to fighting climate change.
The network of transmission lines that carry electricity across the U.S. is old and not set up to meet the anticipated demand for clean energy sources like wind and solar.
Currently, electricity generation results in 32% of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, mostly from burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. Those fuels are transported and burned where electricity is needed.
But inexpensive emissions-free sources of energy, like solar and wind, are only abundant in places where the sun shines or wind blows, and that’s not necessarily close to homes and businesses. Moreover, demand for electricity is going to rise as fossil fuels are gradually replaced for a whole host of other uses, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps.
Keeping the lights on and the air clean will require a lot of new transmission.
‘A double whammy’: Age and location
Most of the U.S. electric grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s. Currently, over 70% of the U.S. electricity grid is more than 25 years old, according to the White House.
That creates “vulnerability,” the U.S. Department of Energy said in an announcement of an initiative included in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to catalyze investment in the nation’s grid.
In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, U.S. electricity customers were without power for slightly longer than seven hours on average, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. More than five of those seven hours were during what the EIA calls “major events,” including snowstorms, hurricanes, and wildfires. That’s a significant rise from the three-to-four-hour average for outages between 2013 (the first year the data is available) and 2016, and the main culprit is extreme weather.
“Extreme weather events like the Dixie Wildfire, Hurricane Ida, and the 2021 Texas Freeze have made it clear that America’s existing energy infrastructure will not endure the continuing impacts of extreme weather events spurred by climate change,” the U.S. Department of Energy said.
Transmission infrastructure lasts between 50 and 80 years, according to a 2021 presentation from the advisory firm, the Brattle Group. Replacing transmission infrastructure that’s reaching its age limit is likely to costing an estimated $10 billion a year, according to the Brattle Group analysis.
American Electric Power, an energy company that owns 40,000 miles of transmission miles, has said 30% of its transmission lines will need replacement over the next 10 years, as highlighted by a 2022 report from the transmission policy group, Grid Strategies.
In addition to the increasing age, the location of the existing transmission lines is a problem.
Fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas are typically transported by railroads or pipelines, then burned in power plants near cities.
The electricity industry in the U.S. grew up through a patchwork of local utility companies meeting local demand, Rob Gramlich, the founder of Grid Strategies, told CNBC. The system of transmission lines in the U.S. was built to serve that model of energy generation.
Clean energy sources, like wind and solar, do not release greenhouse gas emissions, but the energy generated must be moved from where the wind and sun are strongest to where the electricity is actually used.
Wind resources in the United States, according to the the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
That’s especially true for tapping into the highest quality of wind energy, explained Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins, a macro-scale energy systems engineer.
“Wind turbine power scales with the wind speed cubed. That means the best wind power sites are eight times more productive than the worst ones, versus just twice as productive for solar,” Jenkins said.
“That greater degree of variation in wind power potential means we need to build wind farms where it’s really windy, and that tends to not be where too many people live! So wind power development is a big driver of expanded transmission needs,” Jenkins told CNBC.
It’s easier to build solar panels close to where they are needed, but “not so for wind farms,” Jenkins said.
The combination of an aging infrastructure that needs costly upgrades and an energy grid doesn’t go where clean — and cheap — forms of renewable energy are located is “unfortunately a double whammy for consumers,” Gramlich told CNBC.
“But consumers benefit from the cheap generation that transmission enables,” Gramlich said. He advocates for replacing old infrastructure with advanced technology that can handle next generation transmission needs.
“It would be such a waste to replace old assets with replacements of the same capacity and quality,” Gramlich said.
Solar resources in the United States, according to the the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Demand will build fast
In the 1960s and 1970s, electricity construction boomed in both the United States and in Europe, said Konstantin Staschus, who has been focusing on the issue of transmission for his entire career, both in California and Europe.
“Those were the times when California was planning to have a nuclear power plant every 100 miles or so up and down the coast, many more than they ended up building in reality, because they kept projecting 7% annual electricity demand increases, which they used to have in the 60s, into the indefinite future,” Staschus told CNBC. “And they thought they would need generation and transmission coming out of the ears to cover future demands.”
But during and after the oil shocks of the 1970’s, the U.S. dramatically reduced its own energy demand. “Demand growth essentially dropped to 1 or 2% rather than seven and more or less stayed there,” he told CNBC.
From the late 1970’s through the early 2000’s, the U.S. transmission grid expanded at about 2% per year, Jenkins told CNBC.
Now, demand for electricity is going to increase rapidly as efforts to respond to global warming and mitigate the effects of climate change ramp up.
Demand for electricity in 2030 will be 14% to 19% higher than 2021 levels, according to an analysis from REPEAT(Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Analysis Toolkit), an energy policy project Jenkins is part of leading, and 27% to 39% higher by 2035, Jenkins said.
“A 21st century grid has to accommodate steadily rising electricity demand to power electric vehicles, heat pumps, industrial electrification and hydrogen electrolysis, and it needs to extend to new parts of the country to harness the best wind and solar resources. Both factors mean we simply need a bigger grid with more long-distance transmission,” Jenkins told CNBC.
“Throw in resiliency benefits of stronger inter-regional grid connections so a region that’s struggling with a extreme event can call on its neighbors for help, and you’ve got even more reason to build a stronger, bigger grid,” Jenkins said.
Solar panel giant Qcells announced today that it’s temporarily furloughing 1,000 US workers – 25% of its workforce – and reducing pay and shifts at its factories in northeast Georgia due to supply chain delays caused by US Customs.
Qcells furloughs 1,000 workers
The supply chain delays are hindering the company’s ability to import components to build its solar panels. This has resulted in Qcells’ two factories in Cartersville and Dalton being unable to operate at full capacity for several months.
Qcells spokeswoman Marta Stoepker shared the following statement in an exclusive with Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta:
The company says the furloughed workers, who were notified this afternoon, will retain full benefits and won’t be laid off. However, Qcells will no longer be using staffing agency employees in Georgia “at this time.”
As Qcells introduced new supply chains to support its growing solar panel manufacturing facilities in Georgia, the company was recently forced to scale back production while our shipments into the US were delayed in the customs clearance process.
Although our supply chain operations are beginning to normalize, today we shared with our employees that HR actions must be taken to improve operational efficiency until production capacity returns to normal levels.
Stoepker said it expects to bring the furloughed workers back “in the coming weeks and months.” She continued:
Our commitment to building the entire solar supply chain in the United States remains. We will soon be back on track with the full force of our Georgia team delivering American-made energy to communities around the country.
Electrek’s Take
In January 2023, the Seoul-headquartered Qcells announced it would invest more than $2.5 billion to build a solar supply chain in Georgia – the largest-ever investment in clean energy manufacturing in the US to date. That included expanding the Dalton solar factory and building a fully integrated solar supply chain factory in Cartersville, Georgia, that will manufacture solar ingots, wafers, cells, and finished panels.
It’s not quite there yet, because that takes time. In the meantime, it’s being penalized by Customs. The US government under Trump says it’s keen on boosting domestic manufacturing. Why would it work against a company that’s onshoring an entire solar supply chain, including recycling?
Dalton and Cartersville employ nearly 4,000 people. Its total output will reach 8.4 GW of solar production capacity per year, which is equivalent to nearly 46,000 panels per day – enough to power approximately 1.3 million homes annually.
It’s ludicrous that it has been forced to furlough a quarter of its workforce due to the ineptness of the Trump administration’s US Customs policies. This is right up there with the ICE arrests at Hyundai’s plant in Georgia. Bravo.
Read more: Georgia gives US solar panel manufacturing a big boost with a new factory
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The breakthrough EV batteries Toyota says will double driving range and cut charging times are facing another setback. The company is once again delaying plans for a new battery plant in Japan.
Why is Toyota delaying its EV battery plant this time?
Earlier this year, Toyota bought a 280,000-square-meter plot of land in Fukuoka, Japan, where it planned to build a plant to produce the more advanced EV batteries.
A location agreement was expected to be signed by April, but Toyota pushed back construction by several months, blaming slower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles.
The agreement was expected to be finalized this Fall, but that will no longer be the case. According to Nikkei, Toyota is delaying the EV battery plant for the second time. Toyota will review and adjust plans over the next year.
Fukuoka governor, Seitaro Hattori, confirmed the news with reporters on Friday following a meeting with Toyota’s president, Koji Sato. Hattori also shut down claims that Toyota was planning to scrap the battery plant altogether.
Toyota again blamed slowing EV demand for the delay. The decision comes despite Keiji Kaita, president of Toyota’s Carbon Neutral Advanced Engineering Development Center, confirming at the Japan Mobility Show just last week that it’s “sticking on the schedule” to introduce its first solid-state battery-powered EV by 2028.
Last month, Toyota said it aimed to “achieve the world’s first practical use of all-solid-state batteries in BEVs” after securing a partnership with Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. to mass-produce them. It’s also working with Japanese oil giant Idemitsu.
The company recently revealed a solid-state battery pack prototype that it claims can deliver 747 miles (1,200 km) range and 10-minute fast charging, but will we ever see it actually in production?
Electrek’s Take
Toyota has been making empty promises about EV batteries for almost a decade now. It initially planned to introduce solid-state EV batteries in 2020, then pushed it to 2023, then 2026, and now it’s saying it will be around 2028.
Mass production is likely closer to the end of the decade, if Toyota doesn’t delay it again. While it’s blaming the slowing demand, global EV sales are still on the rise. According to Rho Motion, global EV sales topped 2 million for the first time in a single month in September 2025. Through the first nine months of the year, EV sales are up 26% compared to the same period in 2024.
Even with the US ending the $7,500 federal tax credit and other policies designed to promote electric vehicles, global adoption will continue building momentum over the next few years.
Is it a demand issue, or is Toyota just looking for another excuse? With rivals like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW, and Honda advancing next-gen EV batteries, Toyota will only fall further behind if it continues delaying key projects.
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