Power line congestion is forcing “dramatic drops” in wind power production, yet we need far more wind power and even more solar. As one renewable energy developer put it last week: “We are sprinting towards a brick wall.” My latest grid feature profiles the Made-in-the-Midwest fix that could vault North America’s power grids over the hurdles, forging a truly continental network to reliably deliver clean power for homes, highways and industries.

It’s a story of innovative policy and technology, advanced by a pragmatic yet tenacious band of environmental activists and industry planners who are determined to push the power grid to green greatness. And it’s my first for an explicitly ecologically-focused publication like Sierra Magazine, whose readership is more likely to view power lines as an ecosystem disruptor.

In the 70s, Minnesota farmers were severing power lines with high-powered rifles and toppling transmission towers to block grid expansion. But 20 years ago they joined enviro activists, wind developers & utilities to back grid growth that fuelled a wind power boom, inspiring innovative planners at the Midcontinent Independent System Operator or MISO (the nonprofit entity that runs the Midwest’s grid).

MISO’s grid guru Dale Osborn took their winning policy formula and ran, showing how advanced transmission technology could extend MISO’s approach to deliver massive renewables and shutter coal nationwide.

MISO’s transmission train stalled when Gulf states’ utility Entergy joined the club, then used its monopoly muscle to gum up MISO’s grid planning. Trump’s fossil-friendly Energy Department killed action in Washington, DC, burying the evidence that Osborn’s ‘macrogrid’ scheme benefitted both consumers and the environment — political interference that I exposed for The Atlantic and InvestigateWest.

But MISO planners and Osborn’s macrogrid vision are making a comeback. Northern states recently broke Entergy’s filibuster, yielding a historic plan to more than double Midwestern solar & wind energy. And Osborn’s macrogrid plan has gone mainstream in Washington, D.C.

The question now: Can grid operators like MISO, political leaders and conservationists forge bipartisan consensus to build a truly national grid. Without which, it will be far harder to endure the ravages of climate change, and may be impossible to freeze it.

Read the full story online at Sierra Magazine