Faster, Less Expensive Options to Strengthen the Grid
Lori Bird is Director, U.S. Energy and Kelly Lefler is Senior Manager, Grid Decarbonization and Markets at World Resources Institute.
What a difference a year makes. Just twelve months ago, investments under the Inflation Reduction Act were supercharging American manufacturing and clearing the path for quick investments in clean, affordable electricity across the country.
After an incredible policy swing in the 2025 budget deal and looming uncertainty from tariffs, the challenge of meeting new electricity demand growth in the United States appears increasingly intimidating and expensive. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that between 2022 and 2024 electricity prices for consumers outpaced inflation, and EIA projects that prices will climb an average of thirteen percent nationally by the end of 2025 over 2022 prices.
Forecasts across the country point to significant growth in electricity demand through the 2020s, driven upward by data centers, manufacturing, and electrification. While there will be a long-term need for new transmission capacity to support the increased demand and supply of electricity, one crucial near-term tactic is to maximize use of the infrastructure we already have, increasing the ability to serve new load sooner, by deploying grid enhancing technologies.