Opinion | Modern transmission is the cure to America’s energy crisis

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Sometimes my kids ask innocent questions that strike fear in my heart. On a brutally cold, negative-temp day in early December — not even officially winter — my 9-year-old son, Dov, asked what would happen if it dipped to 200 below. Even if we stayed inside, would we all die?

We live in St. Paul, host to one of the coldest winters in the United States. Our early 20th-century house was refurbished by the city and certified as an Enterprise Green Community home. We recently installed a split heating unit to supplement our 2020 gas-powered combi boiler — better for the environment, better for our pocketbooks. We keep our thermostat at 68 degrees, though there are still drafty spots. The kids complain; we tell them to put more clothes on. Sometimes I cave and bump it to 70 degrees.

This month’s energy bill was $274.93 — $130 more than the grossly lowballed “average” cited utility bill, yet almost certainly less than many of my neighbors with poorly insulated homes and older boilers. By some estimates, our bills have jumped over 5% since last year and over 40% since 2015. With the rise of AI and extreme weather, that number is only getting higher.

We live in a good house in a poor ZIP code. I get a lump in my throat thinking about how much colder my neighbors’ kids feel, what the high cost of child rearing looks like in their lives. If it’s hard on us — a high-debt but middle- to high-income family with corporate safety nets and historical privilege — what does it feel like for those less fortunately situated? When for us the sacrifice is pausing a School of Rock tuition, for them it might mean groceries.

These economic, familial and social costs are what I worry about on Tuesdays. On Thursdays, my anxious mind turns to the existential cost of what all this energy inefficiency means for the climate and the future planet Dov and Molly will inherit. Expensive gas and coal — the burning of which directly fuels the climate crisis — are still our dominant forms of energy generation.

Aging transmission and distribution equipment, rising demand from data centers, economy-wide electrification, and extreme weather that requires expensive upgrades are hurtling our energy economy toward collapse. Yet utilities are investing more in “poles and wires” — local distribution, essentially Band-Aids — when what we need is long-distance transmission. “Big wires,” those tall towers and lines that move power across regions, have stalled. Poor coordination among utilities and regulators slows efficient planning.

I’m grief-stricken thinking about the world Dov and Molly will inherit if we continue on this path. We need to build a grid for their future, or we’ve let them down. Without it, Winter Storm Uri — with its failed winterization and preventable deaths — will become the dystopic norm.

The biggest hurdle is permitting. Permitting high-voltage transmission lines is an egregiously complex, yearslong process tangled in regulatory hurdles, environmental reviews and multistate approvals. It’s a grim irony that we can green-light an oil pipeline in months, yet spend a decade wrestling to permit the clean-energy wires meant to replace it.

I was a tree-hugging clean-energy evangelist for half my life before I learned that about 95% of renewable projects are stuck in the interconnection queue. They’re ready to go — built, paid for or fully planned — but can’t plug into the grid. Our grid isn’t big or efficient enough. Most Americans don’t know this because we’ve failed at energy education. And the consequences hit everyone: higher bills, more outages, stalled climate progress and missed economic opportunities when businesses look elsewhere.

High-voltage interregional transmission is the overlooked key to solving America’s energy crisis. Both sides of the political aisle tiptoe around it, arguing about symptoms of the same disease. Modern transmission is the medicine. If we want cheaper energy and a resilient grid, transmission delivers.

Moms can:

These steps speed clean-energy deployment and cut climate-warming emissions. They reduce project delays, prevent blackouts and protect biodiversity through coordinated planning. Permitting reform allows low-cost wind, solar and geothermal power — often far from population centers — to reach households, reducing reliance on volatile fossil-fuel prices. But we won’t get there with the same old policy voices. Energy policy needs new ones — especially women’s. It needs your voice.

In the children’s book “We Are Water Protectors,” by Anishinaabe/Métis author Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Tlingit watercolorist Michaela Goade, a black snake representing oil pipelines threatens Mother Earth and her people’s drinking water. We can imagine a new story: a Good Snake winding across the landscape, humming with sunlight and wind, carrying clean energy that can replace the dirty fuels threatening our water and the delicate web of life. Guided by the wisdom of the Water Protectors, we can teach our kids — and ourselves — to see this shining serpent as an ally, a lifegiving messenger helping our Mother heal.