(VitalNews.org) – The Department of Energy said that they would be giving over two billion dollars to fund eight projects across eighteen states. The goal is to strengthen the electrical grid against extreme weather, meet the growing demand for power, and also transition to cleaner energy.
The money will be used to build more than six hundred miles of transmission line and upgrade four hundred miles of existing lines to carry more current. Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secretary, said that the funding is important because extreme weather events are becoming much more common, as they are being fueled by climate change. This weather is bringing down power lines, leaving people without power, and damaging towers themselves.
One example of a disaster that left people without power was the recent Hurricane Beryl that went through Texas. As a result of that storm, more than three million people didn’t have power, and more than a dozen residents in Houston died from losing power or from heat-related complications.
Granholm stated, “They’ll help us to meet the needs of electrified homes and businesses and new manufacturing facilities and all of these growing data centers that are placing demands on the grid.”
This investment comes from a DOE program called Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships, a ten billion dollar program that was funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
More projects will be announced through this program, but for this time, states including California, Montana, Virginia, North Dakota, and South Carolina are among the states that will be working on the projects from the program.
Max Luke, director of business development and regulatory affairs at VEIR which focuses on making transmission lines that are capable of carrying five times the power of regular ones, spoke out on the investment.
“These investments are certainly a step in the right direction and they are the right types of investments,” Luke said. “If you look at the scale of the challenge and the quantity of grid capacity needed for deep decarbonization and net zero, it’s a drop in the bucket.”
There has been a race to expand electricity transmission as the demand for it continues to rise, especially with the integration of artificial intelligence. Princeton University’s Net Zero America research said that the U.S. would need to expand its electricity by sixty percent by the end of the decade and may need to triple it by 2050.
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