Thread by @70sBachchan

"Obama attempted to accelerate the completion of seven major new transmission lines. Only two were finished. Since 2009, China has built more than 18,000 miles of ultrahigh-voltage transmission lines. The U.S. has built zero."
@yayitsrob on ELECTRIC MAGIC
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

2/Like many countries, China's demand centers (on coasts) are far away from wind,solar & hydro regions (North,West). Engineering solution to Renewables variability problem is to connect large regions w Hi-Voltage Grids. But politics gets in the way. Thread

https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1341289935886663680

3/ You must keep the largest interconnected machines on EARTH alive while it is being whacked by heatwaves, floods, hurricanes, thunderbolts from the sky, and even hackers in basements god-knows-where.
Thread on the US GRID

https://twitter.com/70sBachchan/status/1295908153910079489

4/ "Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony"

Build more Hi-voltage transmission lines if you want to live (& want cheap renewables). Its that simple. vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/upl…

https://twitter.com/VibrantCE/status/1326584643810971649

5/ Clear graphic on the value of inter-regional coordination and transmission in building a 21st C electricity grid (as China did): sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
@russellgold's book 'Superpower' has story of US clean energy revolution russellgold.net/superpower

https://twitter.com/russellgold/status/1337429679511363586

6/“They’re investing significantly,& they’ve gone right to the highest levels of technology capability from day 1. There’s no comparison anywhere else in the world. It’s like we’re all still pedaling our bicycles,while the Formula 1 race car goes flying by”spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-sma…

7/ Why can't US have a modern HVDC grid?
Its got VETO POINTS against green buildout.
Its "still haunted by the 60s new left, human scale everything, prefer participatory democratic obstruction over getting stuff done, inadvertently conservative"-@cszabla

https://twitter.com/70sBachchan/status/1400688078465929216

8/ Wow. Stunning visuals on investment it would take for the US to decarbonize. Anyone who thinks "Robots will take away jobs" or "climate crisis needs degrowth" should take a look. This is what a controlled implosion of the fossil-fuel economy looks like theguardian.com/us-news/2021/m…

9/If China decarbonized while rest of the world did nothing, it alone would drive down global solar/wind prices by 65% & 17% resp
World benefits from cost declines when🇨🇳scales-up manuf & its R&D finds solutions(like HVDC grid)to end 150y of Fossil Growth

https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1348697360243691521

10/ Senate passes bipartisan infra bill with billions of $ explicitly to build new transmission power lines and ease inter-state permitting. That will enable a lot more cheap renewables!
static.politico.com/7e/74/659737a1…
Good day for @yayitsrob to write about GRID

https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1420470481803780104

11/ Not that US can't build & China can. Oil & Gas pipelines breeze past veto points. "status quo—in which it’s easy to build new fossil-fuel...but very difficult to build new electricity infra...Companies can transport every type of energy easily —except zero-carbon electricity"