Volts podcast: the challenges of building transmission in the US, and how to overcome them, with Liza Reed

The US is nowhere close to being able to build the amount of long-distance power lines it will need for a clean energy transition. In this episode, electricity transmission expert Liza Reed breaks down the many problems with the current dysfunctional system, and what it will take to build up the needed infrastructure.

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Text transcript:

David Roberts

Electricity transmission has been having a moment lately, getting more attention from analysts and policymakers than it has in … well, at least in my lifetime. 

There's good reason for this: every single model of deep decarbonization shows that, to get there, the US will need lots, lots more long-distance high-voltage power lines, to carry renewable energy from the remote areas where it is concentrated to the urban load centers where it is needed. 

The problem is, the current system for planning and building those long-distance power lines is utterly dysfunctional, at every level, which means they aren't getting built. The US will not decarbonize on time or on budget unless it can figure this out.

It's a thorny, complicated subject — not just understanding all the flaws in the current process, but figuring out how to move forward with solutions. Loyal Volts subscribers will recall that I wrote a five-part series on these issues earlier this year, but if you're looking for a more compact & polished version, I highly recommend a newly released report, jointly produced by the Niskanen Center & the Clean Air Task Force, called, "How are we going to build all that clean energy infrastructure?" 

The report emerged from a workshop held with a variety of professionals across the industry and serves as a plain-language summary of the problems facing transmission in the US today and the candidate solutions. It's remarkably readable, even for non-nerds — I recommend checking it out.

To walk through those problems and possible solutions, I'm excited to have as my guest today Liza Reed, the Research Manager for Low Carbon Technology Policy at Niskanen. Reed completed and defended a dissertation on these issues just a few years ago and has been a crucial help to me in parsing through them, so I'm thrilled she's joining me today, so that Volts listeners can also benefit. Liza Reed, welcome to Volts.

Liza Reed

Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.

David Roberts

So the Niskanen Center has just come out with this report about transmission and its many challenges. So I thought the best way to structure the conversation would be to kind of walk through the report a little bit. But first, sort of by way of context, tell us, what is the transmission challenge in the United States? What are the decarbonization models telling us about what we need?

Liza Reed

The challenge is that we don't have enough transmission and that we need more transmission.

David Roberts

Pretty simple.

Liza Reed

Yep, it's that simple.

Liza Reed

And we don't have the right mechanisms in place to get the kind of transmission that we need.

David Roberts

But when we say need more relative to what we have, are we talking like a 20% increase, doubling, tripling? Give us a ballpark figure.

Liza Reed

There's sort of a range of estimates that come out of reports, but generally in the double to triple in the capacity is what we're seeing coming out of these decarbonization reports. So that's in the gigawatt miles, is sort of the metric.

David Roberts

And we're not building anywhere close to that pace.

Liza Reed

Exactly. Not at the speed we need and particularly not at the type that we need because transmission is being built. And this is one of the challenges when we talk about this decarbonization challenge, is that there is transmission being built. But transmission is generally defined as anything over 100 kilovolts. And the type of transmission that is going to move a lot of power quickly and over long distances is 500 kilovolts on that high range. So there's a ton of gigawatt miles being built between 100 kilovolts and sort of 345 kilovolts compared to what we're getting at these higher voltages that can transfer a lot more power, go a lot longer distances that provide a different kind of resilience and access to different power in different geographic regions.

David Roberts

Right. So the ones that are getting built are generally, I guess local is not quite the right word, but sort of like a utility will build a line within its territory to connect or strengthen two of it's —

Liza Reed

Exactly.

David Roberts

And what we need are these longer ones between territories, between regions, possibly national. So we're nowhere close on track. And so let's go through — the way you structure the report is around the five P's of transmission. So I thought we would walk through the P's. And what's going wrong with them currently. The first one is planning. So as I understand it, basically utilities have their own planning processes and that's basically what they use to decide on transmission.

But then there are other entities also planning and then there are other entities jumping into the system without planning at all. So tell us what's going on with planning right now.

Liza Reed

Yeah, absolutely.

Liza Reed

So there is planning at different scales. You're correct. And the largest scale on which planning occurs is within what's called a regional transmission organization. An RTO or an ISO. An Independent System operator.

David Roberts

Yeah. Let me pause you there because just in case there are a few people listening who are not yet total energy nerds, we need to start with a quick distinction. There are two sort of general kinds of utility areas. One is with the fully vertically integrated utility is what it's called. They own the generation, the transmission, the interface with the households. They own everything. And then there are these other areas which I think cover about two thirds of customers where the generation has been broken off into an independent business. The utilities are just there to deliver the power to the households.

And then you have these regional transmission organizations that kind of oversee these areas and try to coordinate them. That's a little bit of basic boring background for anybody who's not clued into that.

Liza Reed

That's absolutely perfect. And they are member organizations, which I think is also important. Right. They are organizations of utilities for the most part.

David Roberts

Right. As opposed to outside authorities that might have contrary interests or be able to impose contrary interests.

Liza Reed

Right. And they're not building it themselves. Right. I mean, they are bringing those stakeholders together in pursuit of particular goals, which are largely established by FERC about what these regional RTOs or ISOs should be doing. But they are member organizations, right. So they are conveners and collaborators and they are managing this transmission planning process. But at the end of the day, it is still those members and those utilities who have to build the transmission.

David Roberts

So is it the case that then the RTO brings all its member utilities together and makes something like a regional transmission plan, but then all the individual utilities also have their individual plans?

Liza Reed

I think that's right. It's sort of challenging when we talk about transmission. And why I say I think that's right is that if you and I each put our finger on different points in the United States, the system would be different there.

David Roberts

All right.

Liza Reed

And I'm jumping ahead to the P for process.

David Roberts

It's the overriding P, so it applies to all of these.

Liza Reed

That's correct. That's correct, but right. For the most part that's true. And that's where what you mentioned earlier, these local reliability projects, which is often what they're called, that is often more of an internal to a utility approach. And then these larger planning approaches, again required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are about how the utilities plan on how they work together and what they might need across the system. But that still has a boundary. Right. So we have utility boundaries. We have these RTO boundaries. And then inter-RTO planning or inter-ISO planning happens in theory and I mean technically happens in reality.