Momentum is growing in Washington for a federal high- voltage power grid to spark growth of U.S. renewable energy supplies and decrease the country's dependence on energy imports.
Lobbyists and regulators are urging lawmakers to create a national high voltage transmission system that they say would allow renewable projects such as wind and solar farms to flourish.
A growing appetite in Congress to constrain carbon dioxide emissions and a desire tap the nation's domestic energy sources to reduce dependence on energy imports will likely give a political boost to a federally-mandated national grid.
Although the country has substantial wind and solar potential, much of the generation capacity is located hundreds of miles from the demand centers. A corridor along the Rocky Mountains from North Dakota into the Texas panhandle, for example, could provide nearly a fifth of the U.S.'s power needs, but the largest consumers are located on the East and West coasts. The highest solar potential is in Southwestern states that have comparatively smaller populations.
"We have a chicken and egg problem," said George Pataki, former New York state Republican Governor. "Developers won't build a solar system because there isn't any transmission capacity to move it and utilities won't build the needed transmission because there isn't any generation," he said. Pataki and his consulting firm, the Pataki-Cahill Group, are pushing for Congress to establish federal siting authority that would overcome one of the major challenges to current transmission infrastructure: permitting.
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