What’s a Green Grid and Can Biden Make One?

The U.S. power grid delivers more than $400 billion of electricity a year through almost 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of transmission and distribution lines. This interconnected system of generating plants, wires, transformers and substations keeps the lights on for the homes, offices and factories of the world’s largest economy. As part of his ambitious plans to confront climate change, President Joe Biden aims to make the grid carbon-free by 2035 by greatly reducing emissions and capturing what remains before it’s released into the environment. Creating a so-called green grid would require replacing nearly all of the 60% of the country’s electricity currently generated using fossil fuels with emissions-free energy in a decentralized system no longer oriented around hulking power plants.

The to-do list starts on the production side, with more solar fields and wind farms. Fossil fuel power generators that survive the green transition will need to be rejiggered to burn hydrogen or be retrofitted with systems that capture carbon emissions and store them underground. Scant progress has been made in developing a commercially viable carbon-capture power plant. Distribution is another challenge. The U.S. can produce a lot of wind power in the Midwest and solar energy in the Southwest but will need to deliver it to distant cities. Unlike the existing grid, designed for the one-way flow of power from fossil-fuel plants to homes and businesses, the clean energy grid must allow for power to flow in both directions based on shifts in supply and demand.