President Joe Biden learned to love transmission during his four years in the White House. The question now is whether President-elect Donald Trump will show the same ardor for large power lines when he returns to the Oval Office.
Biden threw the weight of the presidency behind transmission development as part of a wider effort to green America’s electric grid. But as he enters his final weeks in office, some of Biden’s efforts are still falling into place.
A nearly $5 billion loan guarantee for a massive Midwestern power line is pending. Federal financial support for four major transmission projects worth $1.5 billion have yet to be completed. And two major regional grants worth nearly $640 million, one for transmission upgrades in the Mountain West and another for an offshore wind interconnection in New England, are still in negotiation.
Trump has long been a skeptic of renewable energy and criticized its role as a growing source of American power generation. The president-elect pledged this week to put an end to new “windmills.”
