Clean energy, grid obsolescence to get major boosts under infrastructure deal

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WASHINGTON – The nation’s aging power grid and burgeoning clean energy sector are set to get major boosts under a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal reached by the Senate and the White House.

Although details of what the deal includes remain scarce, the agreement includes $73 billion to expand clean energy sources and the ability to move them from one location to another, in what the White House calls “the largest single investment in clean energy transportation in America.” History.” It includes an additional $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations across the United States as the nation seeks to wean itself from fuel-guzzling cars and trucks.

At the same time, the deal will remove major impediments to clean energy adoption and work to cut red tape that has complicated efforts to build much-needed new power lines, according to the White House’s description of the deal.

It’s a far cry from the staggering numbers President Joe Biden initially proposed in March in his US jobs plan, which included $100 billion for the power grid, $174 billion for electric vehicles and $46 billion for clean energy manufacturing. But Democrats are expected to waive most of the remaining spending from the bipartisan agreement in a separate spending bill of $3.5 billion they plan to pass without Republican support.

A look at the clean energy provisions of the bipartisan agreement:

new transmission lines

Two of the biggest energy challenges — flexibility and emissions — both depend on a common factor: the power grid.

The more reliably the power grid is, the better for an area to deal with disruptions affecting local power generation capabilities. This year’s Texas electricity crisis illustrated how the state’s isolation from other sources of energy has left it with insufficient support if things go wrong.

Transmission lines are also essential for the widespread adoption of renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal energy. Fossil fuel stations such as coal and natural gas can generally be built near where the electricity is used. But often clean energy has to be transported long distances to communities from parts of the country where, for example, the weather is windy or sunny.

This requires new, high-voltage transmission lines — and the White House says the $73 billion investment will include building “thousands of miles of new, flexible transmission lines” to help expand renewable energy.

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Energy industry analysts say another big hurdle to building new power lines is endless red tape and finding sites where you can get building permits.

Unlike interstate oil and gas pipelines, there is no single federal authority to which you can apply for permission to build power lines. Long-distance and high-voltage lines cross states, municipalities, and other jurisdictions that may all require different permits—or not grant them at all.

The bipartisan deal would create a new federal entity, called the Grid Deployment Authority, to “finance and encourage the development of high voltage transmission lines,” the White House says. Headquartered within the Department of Energy, the authority will make use of existing public property – highways, roads and railways – to secure rights of way for new power lines.

electric car

The Biden administration says the $7.5 billion for electric car charging stations is the first such investment by the federal government. But it’s less than 5 percent of the amount Biden initially said was needed to meet his goal of setting up half a million charging stations across the country.

Consumers regularly cite “range anxiety” — the fear that an electric car will run out of charge before they can recharge it — as a main reason they wait to switch to electric. The White House says the funding will focus on deploying the chargers along highways, within communities, and in “rural, disadvantaged, and hard-to-reach” settings.

Other expenses

The infrastructure deal also seeks to accelerate the development of smart grids, advanced transport and “next generation” technologies, although it is not immediately clear how much funding will be allocated to those priorities or how it will be spent.

Notably, the White House has singled out several would-be priority technologies that are generally considered “clean,” but not “renewable.” This means that it emits less or no greenhouse gas emissions, but still consumes fuels that are not present in endless quantities, such as the sun and wind.

Among them: advanced nuclear reactors, as well as carbon capture, an emerging but expensive technology that seeks to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal or natural gas before it can enter the atmosphere. The administration also said the deal includes “clean hydrogen,” in which renewable electricity is used to produce hydrogen gas that can be burned with virtually no emissions.

Josh Lederman

Josh Lederman, NBC News reporter.

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