Environment & climate
The grid problem: why clean energy's hardest part is moving it
12 min
Generating renewable power is increasingly cheap; storing it and moving it where it's needed is the real bottleneck. Explore the engineering and economics of grids, batteries, and why the transition lives or dies on infrastructure.
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Show notes
Three thousand gigawatts of global renewable projects are currently stalled in interconnection queues.
The median wait time for United States energy projects increased from two to five years.
Dynamic line ratings can increase existing grid capacity by ten to thirty percent without new wires.
Advanced composite conductors double current capacity by replacing traditional steel cores with carbon fiber.
Iron-air batteries provide multi-day energy storage by utilizing a controlled rusting process.
Artificial intelligence data centers are driving tech firms to build on-site small modular nuclear reactors.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Interconnection Queue Crisis3 min
- 3The Physics of the One-Way Grid3 min
- 4Grid-Enhancing Technologies and Storage3 min
- 5The Economics of the AI Power Surge2 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- The Grid Bottleneck for Renewable Energy
- E82: Watts the Problem?
- E8: Transmission: power to the people | MIT Climate Portal
- The clean energy transition has a hardware problem - Crux
- Must C: Overcoming Gridlock 2.0 — Solving Power Bottlenecks to Drive AI & Energy Security
- Renewable Energy Grid Bottlenecks 2026 | Green Fuel Journal
- The Grid: The Largest Machine Ever Built | The Stepchange Show
- Why Power Grids Are The Bottleneck Of The Energy Transition In 2026
- The U.S. Interconnection Challenge: Why Renewables Are Stuck in Line | Council on Foreign Relations
- Power Grids: Bottleneck for Clean Energy?
- Queued Up: 2026 Edition
- Queued Up: 2026 Edition, Characteristics of Power Plants Seeking Transmission Interconnection As of the End of 2025 | LBL ETA Publications
- The Interconnection Queue Continues to Be a Barrier to US Economic Competitiveness - RMI
- Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs): How Adaptive Transmission Infrastructure Is Reshaping the Renewable Energy Economy | Green Fuel Journal
- HOW GRID PROJECTS
- Queued Up: 2025 Edition
- Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions
- Grid congestion is posing challenges for energy security and transitions – Analysis - IEA
- Building the Future Transmission Grid
- Accelerating transmission capacity expansion by using advanced conductors in existing right-of-way | PNAS
- Grid connection backlog grows by 30% in 2023, dominated by ...
- A Roadmap for Advanced Transmission Technology Adoption
- Queued Up: Characteristics of Power Plants Seeking Transmission Interconnection | Energy Markets & Planning
- Generator Interconnection Costs to the Transmission System in non-ISO Balancing Authorities
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