Who Pays for the Grid

Every serious energy plan, of every ideological description, requires more transmission capacity. Generation is comparatively easy to site and build. Moving the power to where it is used is not.

The obstacle is rarely technical. It is cost allocation. A line that crosses three states delivers benefits unevenly, and the state that hosts the towers without gaining much load has no reason to volunteer.

Regulators have spent decades trying to write allocation formulas that survive challenge. The formulas get litigated, the litigation takes years, and the queue of projects waiting to connect grows through all of it.

The unglamorous truth is that this is a bargaining problem, not an engineering one, and it will be resolved when someone assembles a package where every state gets enough to say yes. That work is slow, and it is the actual job.