Creating clean energy isn't enough: we need to move it too.

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In the near future, the energy produced in the US will be much greener. The country's current goal is for solar power plants alone to produce nearly half of America's electricity by 2050. But we cannot simply build solar power plants where coal and gas plants used to be. They should be built where it's… sunny. And wind turbines should be built where it is windy. The problem is that there are not always the people who need the power.

The distance between energy source and energy requirement is becoming much greater. And the US will need more high-voltage transmission lines. Much more. As soon as possible. While solar power plants can be built relatively quickly, high-voltage transmission projects can take up to ten years. So experts say we should proactively start building them right now.

This is the second of five videos we're releasing this week on climate reporting. You can watch the first video about extreme heat and what cities are doing to combat it here: https://youtu.be/ZQ6fSHr5TJg

And the third video on prescribed burns for forests here: https://youtu.be/0o6ezu_h6iE

Sources and further reading:
Much of the map data in the piece comes from Princeton University's Net-Zero America study: https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/

This map from the US Energy Information Association is a good way to see which power plants and power lines are near you (if you are in the US): https://www.eia.gov/state/maps. php

Vermont Public Radio reported on the energy bottleneck we talk about at the beginning of the video: https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2020-12-15/transmission-grid-bottlenecks-in-northeast-kingdom -stall-solar-development

And here's more about that rejected power plant from local TV station WCAX in Vermont: https://www.wcax.com/content/news/Regulators-deny-Derby-solar-project-504867011.html

This other great study calculated how much renewable energy potential there is in just those 15 middle states: https://acore.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Corporate-Demand-and-Transmission-January-2018 .pdf

More about the 2018 Camp Fire in California and the investigation that found it was started by electrical transmission lines: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/15/officials-camp-fire-deadliest-in-california-history -was-caused-by-pge-electrical-transmission-lines.html

And if you really want to get into the details of how these lines work, I found the Edison Tech Center very helpful: https://edisontechcenter.org/wires.html

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