Tuesday's referendum in Maine proved yet again that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the expansion of renewables in the U.S. It also showed that the myriad claims being made by climate activists that we can run our economy solely on renewables are little more than wishful thinking.
Put another way, to convert the electric grid to 90% renewables would require enough high-voltage transmission to circle the Earth about 10 times. That’s a lot of wire. Furthermore, attempting to build that much transmission would be staggeringly expensive. The cost of the NECEC in Maine is about $6.5 million per mile. Even if we assume a lower number, say $4 million per mile, building the 240,000 miles of high-voltage transmission that NREL suggests will be needed will cost roughly $1 trillion.
Indeed, Tuesday’s rejection of the transmission project by Maine voters marks the second time that utilities in Massachusetts have been defeated in trying to get hydropower from Canada to their customers. In 2018, New Hampshire regulators rejected a high-voltage electricity transmission project called Northern Pass Transmission that was to carry power from Quebec hydroelectric facilities to Massachusetts. The 192-mile, $1.
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