On May 10th, 1869, the Jupiter and Union Pacific No. 119 made history when the two locomotive engines met nose to nose at Promontory, Utah. With a golden spike, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads were joined to create the first transcontinental railroad. By providing a direct way to ship goods from coast to coast, it was a pivotal moment for trade and the US economy.
Now there is another opportunity on the horizon to connect the country in a truly transformative way: a “super-grid” of electricity transmission lines to connect the now distinct power grid regions.
A new analysis by the Department of Energy shows that such a grid would cost $80 billion, but would return more than twice that amount in economic gains. It would allow for renewable energy generated during sunny California afternoons to power the evening electricity load on the East Coast, and evening winds that whip across the plains to smooth out the West Coast’s nighttime peak.
It would be a boon, in other words, for the renewable energy industry.
Which is probably why the DOE still hasn’t released the two-year study, which, as E&E reports, has apparently “been finished for a while,” according to Vibrant Clean Energy LLC CEO Christopher Clack.
DOE responded to questions from E&E with a statement indicating that they “reviewed preliminary results from the study and decided to expand the project to model and analyze additional scenarios.”
But if you’re not willing to wait for the final report to be released, (or think this will be the 382nd example of the Trump administration silencing science) one of the project leads, Aaron Bloom, described the findings at a symposium back in 2018, during a two hour presentation that’s available on YouTube.
Now, if you’re wondering why the report findings were final enough to be discussed publicly in 2018, but DOE doesn’t want to actually release the report itself until 2022, consider the fact that such a plan would be great for renewables but wouldn’t do anything to help coal or natural gas plants.
That said, the report’s lead, James McCalley, said in an interview with E&E “are we ‘killing’ coal? Maybe we are, but that’s not the purpose over the overlay.” Instead, it’s to see the best and cheapest way to move energy around the country, and “if you [were] to build coal like crazy, it will facilitate that, too.”
Though as we saw with the bankruptcy filing of Murray Energy, building any new coal plants would be crazy. We probably shouldn’t be shocked that the Trump administration appears to be slow-walking this report.
But hey, at least they’re just delaying, and not (golden) spiking it all together…
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