The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is issuing a $2 billion tranche of funding for 38 projects across 42 states in the second round of federal incentives designed to buttress the nation’s electric grid resiliency and expand its capacity to generate the power needed to meet increasing demand.
The $2 billion in GRIP funding follows the October 2023 release of $3.46 billion for 58 projects across 44 states to “bolster grid resilience and reliability in the face of extreme weather and increased electricity demand,” DOE said in an Oct. 17 statement.
“The funding couldn’t come at a more critical time because energy demand, as we know, is rising nationwide, and it is straining our outdated grid infrastructure,” DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters during an Oct. 16 virtual conference, noting the recent devastating storms, Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Within those 38 projects is $600 million for six projects in areas hammered by both storms that President Joe Biden announced during an Oct. 13 tour of damage in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Granholm said GRIP is “the single-largest investment” in the nation’s grid in history but that it’s just one part of a “whole-of-government” approach to protecting and enlarging the nation’s power supply.
She said the $2 billion will build or upgrade more than 4,377 miles of transmission lines, generate “6,000 good-paying jobs” of which more than 80 percent will use International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union labor.
With the second tranche of funding and other allocations, $7.6 billion of the $10.5 billion has been awarded, Granholm said, spurring “a combined $36.9 billion in public-private funding for grid projects across the country.”
GRIP is adding grid capacity and resiliency by installing new transmission lines, “reconducting existing lines, basically putting twice the power using upgraded materials on existing lines,” installing software to improve interconnection cues, and investing heavily in “undergrounding” power lines, she said.
GRIP will ultimately “add more than 32 Hoover Dams’ worth of renewable energy to the grid,” Granholm said.
“These projects are creating nearly 30,000 good-paying jobs overall, and over 90 million homes and businesses stand to benefit from more resilient, reliable power,” she said.
The secretary noted utilities and transmission operators submitted more than $50 billion in project applications for the awarded $7.6 billion.
“That’s six and a half times what we have available. This clearly demonstrates the tremendous need for grid investment nationwide,” Granholm said. “So it is historic, but our work is far from over. Demand for grid investment continues to outpace the funding that we have available.”
Power Equals Jobs
Senior White House adviser for international climate policy John Podesta said the nation needs to do three things if it is “to double” its electricity transmission capacity by 2035 to meet projected demand.“First, we need to make the kind of investments that DOE is announcing, both the federal dollars, plus the private sector dollars that they will catalyze,“ he said. ”These awards will expand both new and upgraded transmission capacity from Arizona and North Carolina, which will get new clean energy projects online faster.”
Second, Podesta said, inter-regional transmission planning “to increase reliability and lower costs” must be improved.
“Third, we need to cut through the red tape, which is exactly what we’ve been doing over the past four years,” he said.
White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said that much of the nation’s 150,000 miles of transmission lines and 6,000 power plants were “built decades ago, if not over 100 years ago,” and that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was adopted to address this issue.
“We need our grid better adapted to storms like hurricanes Helene and Milton and other extreme climate disasters like the wildfires out west,” he said.
Most were built between 1970 and 1990 and average more than 40 years in service. Only two new reactors have come online since 2016, Vogtle’s Unit 3 and Unit 4 reactors in Georgia, which were more than $16 billion over budget and six years behind schedule.
“Folks are recognizing what so many of us have been saying from day one, that we have the technologies, we have the workers, we have the wherewithal to meet this new demand with clean electrons, and you’re seeing technology firms pick up those tools and race forward with them,” Zaidi said.
Zaidi said a general rule of thumb is it costs $1 million for every new mile of transmission line built, and every new mile of transmission line generates between three and four direct jobs and up to a dozen indirect jobs.
“When [Biden] talks about climate, he sees jobs, and this is a great example of how that translates,” he said.
