Seriously, many communities are fighting transmission facilities as well as power plants. No matter which energy generation technologies end up in the portfolio, we need improved grid facilities and better public understanding of this need.

Building new transmission to tap the vast wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy resources found in relatively remote areas is going to be critical to unlocking a clean energy future. There’s enough wind energy potential in Montana to provide to 1/4 of the United States’ electricity demand on it’s own, for example. Yet remote renewable energy resources including wind potential in Montana, and the Great Plains, solar in the Southwest, geothermal in various areas, etc. need to be connected up to load-centers (i.e. cities) that are usually quite far away.

I am a huge proponent of localized solutions to climate change, from energy efficiency to distributed generation. But given the scale of the challenge, we will also need to tap large-scale, remote renewable energy resources as well and find a way to connect those resources with areas of demand, often thousands of miles away.

The same high voltage transmission lines that are currently proposed to tap coal plants in the Rocky Mountain corridor could be used to bring vast supplies of wind power, geothermal or solar to supply the cities of the west coast, while transmission corridors from the Great Plains could bring clean energy to the Midwest or even Eastern seaboard.

So I hope we keep our focus on keeping coal of the wires, and not simply blocking the wires entirely (unless that’s the only way I suppose).

Cheers,

Jesse Jenkins
Cascade Climate Network
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