Transitioning the grid for climate change: power transmission futures and grid justice

Abstract

Amid the ongoing international boom in renewable power generation, debates over the future of the grid are gaining increasing attention in the United States and beyond. Climate change poses parallel but entangled questions for the large-scale movement of electricity. On the one hand, grid operation is a profoundly altered undertaking in renewables-dominated grids, bringing new management challenges around multi-directional flows, variability, bids for long-distance renewable power transmission, and more. On the other hand, electricity operators and users simultaneously face new climate-related disruptions, repair needs, and risks. In this paper, we explore an important set of energy and climate justice debates emerging around these combined decarbonization and grid resilience challenges, particularly concerns related to high-voltage transmission in the United States and other countries with developed but aging grids. We consider questions of transmission grid (1) access, (2) ownership, (3) siting, and (4) scale/rescaling. We illustrate these issues via the exemplary case of New York State, as the state has become a high-profile focus for debates around grid congestion, rising financial sector ownership of transmission projects, and siting justice issues, as well as for varying progressive alternatives in campaigns for both large-scale public power and decentralized ‘non-wires’ solutions.

Keywords

• transmission grids
• renewable energy transition
• energy justice
• climate justice
• United States