Catalyst with Shayle Kann - Looking for a turnaround in transmission

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

After years of stalled transmission buildout, there are new signs of progress. Earlier this month, SPP approved $8.6 billion in transmission projects across 14 states. Major plans are emerging in MISO, PJM, and ERCOT. Despite the DOE canceling its loan guarantee, the Grain Belt Express is still moving forward. And regardless of court battles, so is the New England Clean Energy Connect.  Are these signs that the U.S. could start building transmission at scale again? In this episode, Shayle talks to Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies. He and Shayle cover topics like: Why Rob says the DOE’s efforts to fast-track large-load interconnection is a positive sign for transmission buildout The recent buildout of 880 miles of transmission and why it may look better than it is Why transmission hasn’t benefited from data center investment  Specific projects, including SPP’s transmission backbone and the Grain Belt Express Rob’s outlook on buildout over the coming year The uncertain future of permitting reform despite bipartisan support Resources: Catalyst: Unpacking DOE’s proposal to transform data center interconnection    Latitude Media: How the Grain Belt Express lost its LPO loan   E&E News: Data center growth cited in defense of MISO transmission plan  Fill out our short podcast listener survey for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.  Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.Catalyst is brought to you by Bloom Energy. AI data centers can’t wait years for grid power—and with Bloom Energy’s fuel cells, they don’t have to. Bloom Energy delivers affordable, always-on, ultra-reliable onsite power, built for chipmakers, hyperscalers, and data center leaders looking to power their operations at AI speed. Learn more by visiting BloomEnergy.com.

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Thank you so much. Latitude Media covering the new frontiers of the energy transition. I'm Shell Khan, and this is Catalyst. It was quite dramatic that the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Wright, wrote this letter to FERC saying, here's a rulemaking I'm putting before you on access to the grid. It strongly proves the point. The whole AI industry needs the grid and that this current administration is, willing to do anything and everything to support AI.

So now we need to see the next step of, okay, well, let's expand the grid. Coming up. Transmission. Transmission. When utilities need flexible capacity they can count on, they turn to Energy Hub. Energy Hub works with more than 170 utilities,

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They're shaped by markets, by policy, by capital, and by the institutions that connect them. I'm Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, and host of a brand new podcast, Critical Capital. Each episode, I talk with people deploying capital, shaping policy, and building the clean economy. Tune in as we unpack how progress is actually made. Listen to Critical Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Catalyst is supported by Fish Tank PR, an award-winning PR firm focused on climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability. Fish Tank is known for generating prominent and effective media coverage for the brands they work with.

If you want a PR partner that's thoughtful, shoots straight, and gets results, you'll like Fish Tank PR. To learn more about Fish Tank's approach, visit fish tankpr.com. That's F-I-S-C-H-Fish-Tankpr.com. I'm Shale Khan. I lead the early stage venture capital strategy at Energy Impact Partners. Welcome. Apologies for my singing voice. We're talking transmission this week because I had Rob Gremlin on a year ago, a little over a year ago, to talk about the woeful state of U.S. transmission buildout, which has, like, truly been embarrassing for the past decade or so and even worse in recent years.

And we talked about all the reasons why that was true and what might change and so on. But, you know, I'd say the outlook was, like, we're in a tough spot and a bunch of things need to change in order for us to start building significant transmission lines again. Just as a reminder, we need to build new transmission lines for lots of reasons. We need to integrate lots more renewables on the grid and other generation. And also now, we need to serve all of this new load that's showing up in the form of data center. So the need is doubled. And that speaks to why I want to have the conversation again today, which is a lot has changed in the past year, in the electricity sector. Things in other parts of the market have changed substantially.

and transmission may or may not be the hardest thing to change. So I wanted to see whether all of the rapid change, all of the money that is flowing into the sector has moved the needle on building out new high-voltage power lines in the U.S. So I brought back Rob Gramlich from Grid Strategies to do an update. Here's Rob. Rob, welcome back. Thanks, Shail.

Good to be with you. All right, so you and I talked on this podcast a little over a year ago about transmission and new transmission, I would say, in particular, in the U.S. And it was a tale of woes and a big long exclamation of how amazing it is that we've been able to build so little transmission, new high voltage transmission in particular in the United States in the past decade or so. And I wanted to have you back on because, you know, the past year has changed many things about the electricity. sector. And I wonder whether it has changed this thing. So my high-level question for you is, do you think we're in a fundamentally different position with regard to, I don't know, your outlook on new transmission build in the U.S. relative to a year ago, or is it more the same

place? Well, we're still struggling to put the pieces together. I think we do have a good platform that actually has a pretty decent shot of, you know, surviving the political change we've all experienced because transmission is so critical for data centers and AI-driven data center demand. But we don't really know that for sure yet. Things are just sort of getting settled with the relevant agencies here in Washington, Department of Energy and FERC. So we don't really know how that's going to turn out. We did actually have an uptick in new lines in 2024. So that was new because I think when we spoke, we were talking about how there were only 55 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines in 2023, which is down, you know, a trickle from the 4,000, you know, that had been built 10 years prior,

which hopefully I wasn't all woe was me, woe was us. I was woe as us, certainly. I mean, you know, I do like to point at that experience 10 years ago and say, hey, look, we were able, in this country, with all the permitting challenges we have to build 4,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission, I connected all this clean energy. So there is hope, and we like to point to that example, saying, look, when we get the pieces together, right, we can do this. But then, you know, some things happened, and we went down to a trickle of only 55 miles.

Well, there wasn't uptick to, like, 880-ish miles in 2024. So that's, you know, some good news. when I first saw that, I thought, oh, great, like we're starting to turn things around. But if you look a little bit closer, it's, you kind of see, oh, wait a minute. These were lines that were, like, begun 10 or 15 years ago that just finally got finished. Now, you know, you could say, all right, that's a good story because a number of these did need, like, federal permits from federal agencies. And I think during the Biden administration, they were approving transmission projects. And so, you know, that's good news, and, you know, that could continue, might not continue in the current administration.

We don't know yet. But, you know, there wasn't uptick. So in some ways, we've gotten some permitting. But some of the key policies like at FERC in Order 1920, you know, it could, you know, be sort of branded as a democratic thing. I think it was bipartisan. And, you know, it actually had no preferences for renewable energy or anything like that. So I think it should be safe and robust to a partisan change with new commissioners coming in. But we don't know yet.

We don't know what the new commissioners are going to do about 1920. Are they going to implement it or just kind of render it sort of a dead letter and a weak order? Can you briefly re-describe 1920? Sure. So that was the order issued a few years ago for proactive long-term terms. Transmission planning, 20-year plans for each region. So it applies to the grid operators like PJM and MISO and SPP and California ISO, but also to the non-RTO utilities they need to get with their neighbors and put regional plans together.

And so, you know, significant order, very well crafted, in my opinion. Chairman Glick and his team, you know, shepherded it through and Commissioner Clements and others, chairman and then commissioner christie uh was there for the latter part of it he he made some changes um but it uh so it you know it kind of wound up very sort of bipartisan and you know technology neutral uh which is fine uh but it you know it's there should be done the courts will have their say hopefully people will revoke their challenges from the courts and just let it stay as it is. And then hopefully, FERC will actually, you know, implement it with teeth and not just accept any old thing that comes in on compliance. But that is the next step.

As the regions file their compliance approaches with FERC and FERC, you know, kind of on the margin can either make it be a weak rule or remain a strong rule. I mean, is this the fundamental reason why things... So, like, in other parts of the electricity world, Things have changed a lot in the past year, right? And it's driven by just the, it's like necessities, the mother of invention. It's a combination of necessities, the mother invention, and there is essentially an endless pool of money willing to throw itself at any solution that gets more power to data centers faster.

Is the reason why this hasn't, like, transmission hasn't benefited from that, that, like, the only way to solve it is kind of, it's like what you're describing, it's like a FERC order that has to go through the ISOs that takes years to go through the process. And so it's just inherently a slower thing because you could imagine a scenario where sort of similar to what we're seeing in other categories, right? Like hyperscaler wants to build data center and strikes a deal with utility where they can get interconnected faster if they pay for 100 miles of new 765 KB. line or something like that.

You would think that kind of thing would be happening. Yeah, I think it's just, you know, it's not right in the bull's eye of, you know, the data center's immediate need or the utility's immediate need. It's sort of the, you know, the background infrastructure that everybody relies on. And absolutely, you need to build up that network, that backbone network to support all this new load.

But, you know, it's not the obvious thing. It's not what, you know, incoming officials that the Department of Energy immediately go to as, oh, here's immediately what we need to go focus on. And it's not, you know, it doesn't catch a lot of the press attention. A lot of the press attention is about, oh, look at this, you know, on-site generation option or a new, you know, now we're doing rice generators or this or that or the other on-site option. Those get, for some reason, more attention. But, I mean, my understanding from the hypers and the data center developers is that they all really, really want the full network transmission service with all of the good backup and cushion that that network provides to their operations

and the 5-9's reliability that you only get that way. And so I think the message is starting to filter through the process. I mean, it was quite dramatic that the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Wright, wrote this letter to FERC saying, you know, here's a rulemaking I'm putting before you on access to the grid. Right, but it's not really, it doesn't really have anything about transmission in it, right? Well, it's access to transmission. And then, so it begs the next question of, well, if you care that much to do this dramatic order

that's, you know, almost never used authority, and take all the, you know, the beating from state regulators who would be losing some jurisdiction, if you're willing to do that, well, then you must care about the size of the grid, the actual capacity of the grid. You know, what's access to a grid if it has no capacity for you? So to me, it strongly proves the point that the whole, you know, AI industry,

if you want to call it that, needs the grid and that this current administration, which is willing to do anything and everything to support AI being done in this country, it proves that the transmission network is critical to that because they're taking this major action to get access to the transmission grid. So now we need to see the next step of, okay, well, let's expand the grid. And all the things that come with that, which is order 1920 and then interregional transmission and then using the DOE programs like the transmission

facilitation program we could go on. But there are a lot of things that FERC and DOE can do to actually enable the expansion of the grid. Is this a little bit of a tragedy of the commons kind of a problem? 100%. Yeah. It's where it's like any given data center company needs transmission expansion, but you can't attribute that transmission build out to that specific data center necessarily.

So they can't say, I will put down money for you to build out new transmission lines specifically for me. And as a result, it gets pushed down the order of priority list because they're like, okay, immediate concern is getting this data center connected to the grid. And so instead, I'm just going to go buy a bunch of gas generators or whatever it is. Exactly right. Look, these cyperscalers, and you know, you and I know them all, and I'm sure we both have many friends at each of them, they are in intense competition with each other. to the point where the people I know at the hyperscale, they don't actually know which data centers are being developed for their company because it's so commercially sensitive than only a few people, even in the company, know which ones they're really planning to go forward with.

And so if they're in that intense competition, like company to company, then it's of much less interest, just much less incentive for them to go work on the network that, all of their competitors get to use just as much as they do. So that's classic public good, tragedy of the commons. And, you know, it's the reason why, you know, in this scenario, this is a classic reason why you have government leadership. And, you know, as a nation, if we are in an AI race with China,

then we should be using federal leadership to build out the network for all of those data centers here that want to be in this country and operating here, not the Middle East, or, you know, Asia or wherever else. And so, you know, for this to happen right, you really need federal leadership. States and regions can do a lot as well and localities, but, you know, we really need to build out the transmission network, which is an interstate federally regulated network. Virtual power plants are becoming a reliable way for utilities to manage capacity, but

enrolling devices is just the start. What really matters is confidence, knowing those resources will perform when dispatched and being able to prove it from the control room to the living room. Energy Hub's platform handles the full picture, from near-real-time forecasting, locational dispatch, and the kind of rigorous verification that holds up when regulators, grid operators, or leadership ask, did it deliver? Easy enrollment creates momentum, proven performance builds trust. That's why more than 170 utilities rely on Energy Hub to manage over 2.5 million devices delivering 3.4 gigawatts of flexible capacity.

See what that looks like at energy hub.com. We're living through a profound economic shift, and energy sits at the center of all of it. Trillions of dollars are flowing into power plants, transmission lines, battery factories, data centers, but the future of energy isn't shaped by technology alone. It's shaped by markets, by policy, by capital, and by the institutions that connect them.

I'm Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, the capital platform for the clean economy. Join me for my brand new show, Critical Capital, as I talk with people deploying capital, shaping policy and building projects. Together, we unpack how risk is priced, how incentives are structured, and how progress is actually made.

Listen to Critical Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you tired of overpaying for big-name PR firms, but not really knowing what they're delivering? Is your comms team wasting time reviewing lengthy messaging briefs and decks, instead of engaging journalists or producing content. Are you wondering why your competitors are getting press and you aren't?

Fish Tank PR is an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early stage and established companies. Whether you need to position yourself as a thought leader in between project announcements or translate complex ideas and technologies into tangible, compelling stories that resonate with the media, fish tank can help. Check out fish tankpr.com. That's F-I-S-C-H-Fish-TankPR.com. Let me throw a couple of recent announcements at you and just get your take on, like,

how big a deal is this and what does it mean? Okay, so one was, I think just recently, SPP, Southwest PowerP, Southwest Powerpool, got, I think, approval to build this 765 KV transmission backbone, as they called it. That sounds quite positive. How big a deal is that? Yeah, that plan, the ITP plan is huge.

I mean, they went back and forth, and I don't know the final number in terms of it might be closer to the $10 billion version rather than the $20 billion version. Yeah, it's like $8.6 or something. It was the number I read. Okay. So, you know, it got unfortunately cut back. I hope there's a way. Here's another way. Like the federal government could come in and say, hey, for AI race with China, we want to get you back up to the $20 billion.

and we're going to help you. But hopefully it ain't over till it's over on that. But at any rate, directionally, it's fantastic. A 765 KV collector loop with, you know, I mean, anybody's favorite generation source is available in that, you know, Great Plains footprint, and, you know, the market will decide which ones go forward. But there certainly could be a tremendous amount of clean energy that connects to that system and powers a tremendous amount of data center and new manufacturing and other load in that area.

Okay, so now an announcement that points in the opposite direction, which is that the DOE, the loan programs office, canceled the loan guarantee that was going to be offered to the Greenbelt Express project. So to your point, it seems from all the other indications that this administration would be super in favor of new transmission buildout, that cancellation seems like an odd decision

in light of that? What do you make of it? Yeah, so many people interpreted that as so maybe they don't care about transmission. I don't interpret it that way. I think that was a very unique circumstance where a senator decided to use his minutes in the Oval Office to talk about a specific loan to a specific transmission line.

Okay, that's not going to happen very often in the future. And if it does, any time a senator uses his time with the president to talk about a specific loan to a specific line, that loan anyway will be in trouble. The project, I expect, will go forward. It's a great project. But that loan is no longer. So I just think, you know, I mean, presidents do things at the request of senators sometimes. and, you know, that's what happened.

How many... Okay, I guess the way to ask this question is, you said before, like, okay, to the extent that we built anything out recently, it's been stuff that was in the works for the past 10 years, et cetera. So presumably we should have pretty good visibility then into how much we will build for the next two, three, four, five years. How much is it?

Yeah, I think it's looking pretty good. I mean, you've got 765 KV AC plans. We mentioned SPP, but MISO in more like the Great Lakes part of the Midwest, and is looking at 765 PJM as well, and they just came out with a new, very much more ambitious plan than we've seen from them in the Mid-Atlantic. And Urquhart and Texas also have 765 KV plans. And so that's four regions who are for the first time in many decades doing the highest AC voltage transmission lines that we have. So, you know, those take time.

But those are now being planned. And there were also plans that, you know, started more like five, seven years ago, the MISO long-range transmission plan. Some of these are still facing some challenges like that one has. There's a challenge at FERC with some states. but hopefully that will go forward. California ISO has continued. They've been cranking along quietly for many years. Pretty much they're the only one to have kind of gone nonstop on transmission.

So every year they're doing more and it's bringing in resources from around the West. So, yeah, I do think there's a lot of indications. New York has some. There's a new line that the NECEC and the FECECC and the F. from Quebec into New England is finally going forward after some back and forth and tough court decisions and opposition. But I do think there are a bunch that are on their way and looking promising. So the curve may bend back up a little bit at least. Like that stuff comes together.

We could be building hundreds, thousands of miles per year. Yeah, yeah, we could be getting into a few thousand or more miles per year. And then how much is all this stuff tied up in the question of permitting reform? How much does that matter? Because it's not clear to me whether that's actually on the horizon. It may be, but it certainly hasn't happened yet. Do we need it? I do think we need it.

I mean, you can build things here and there under the current regime, which, again, you know, was proven by 10 years ago we did it. But there are real limitations. with that and some of it is this big inter-regional opportunity like we don't really have a system in place to build inter-regional transmission from region to region mice or SPP to the interior west or interior west to the coast all of these neighboring regions there's a massive untapped value of transmission there and you know we don't have a regional transmission organization with a planning process to deal with that. And this whole more mac, looking at the whole industry on a more macro scale,

you know, we're evolving out of a industry that started with 3,000 utilities doing their local thing and their local fiefdom without much of, you know, tie between them. And so we're crafting onto the top this more regional and then inter-regional approach, and it's a process, a multi-decadeal process that we're still working through and we're nowhere near the end game on that. So we're still working through on that.

Permitting reform, at least as set up in the Mansion Baraso Energy Permitting Reform Act, EPR from a couple years ago, it has a transmission title. That is a big focus on interregional transmission planning and

you know, kind of determining what are the list of benefits that are the basis for cost allocation and some federal permitting. roll in there. So those things, in my opinion, are extremely helpful. It's a great bill. It was bipartisan, passed the Senate Energy Committee, 11 to 4, only one Republican opposed. Same one, Senator Hawley, who opposed the Greenbelt loan. But otherwise, very strong showing at the Senate Energy

Committee. And now it's, you know, I think it's teed up for the broader permitting package, which there are complexities on the other components of the package that both House and Senate are working through. I expect to see the House moving pretty quickly on one piece, the NEPA-related piece, and that'll be an important milestone. So I do think there's a chance, and I do think it would have a very big impact on transmission and enabling transmission going forward. How much innovation do you see in the transmission world, in the sense of either planning, right,

like people have talked about citing transmission lines along railways, that kind of thing, undergrounding technology innovation. What do you think is interesting? Yeah, I do think there are some very interesting, I'll call them advanced transmission technologies. You know, one category is high-performance conductors

with carbon core or superconductors where you put up a new wire either on the same tower or rebuild the towers. That's for Reconductoring more than New Builds, right? Yeah, that's right. It's for both. But yeah, but it does open up the opportunity for reconductoring, which is very fast because you don't need a new right-of-way for that.

So that's one category. Another category is grid-enhancing technologies, which are more the operational type technologies, topology optimization, advanced power flow control, dynamic line rating, that sort of thing. In storage as transmission you could put in there. And those increase headroom and capacity, in a quick way.

And again, the mantra in Washington anyway is speed to power because that's kind of the mantra for the data center community right now. And those things are speedy. They're relatively inexpensive and they're speedy. You know, they don't fully solve

the problem. It's not like you don't need new transmission as well. But they do increase the headroom and we all need headroom because it's a very constrained, congested grid right now. So final question, I guess. You mentioned we don't really have a system for interregional transmission.

There are those out there, folks at Grid United, run by Mike Skelly, a famous long-time transmission developer, Invenergy and others who have planned projects that are in a regional. So how are they doing it? Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think there is a little market for some transmission that you can cobble together enough you know basically money

from customers like voluntary subscriptions from utilities along the route or at either end in order to pay for some lines

you know long term I don't think that's enough to build anywhere near the optimal amount but there is some and they're you know these developers

to their credit are looking at like some super high value pathways and they have I think in many cases, very cleverly figured out good roots that can be put together and worked things out with landowners.

So many of them are pretty far along on that and what they do. I mean, they kind of pass the hat to utilities and say, hey, would you pay this much? And if they get enough, then they can go forward. And, you know, they do often need federal permits. And one hopes that there are actual staff at the Department of Interior and places like that to actually issue permits. It does rely on that. in many cases. But some of these lines are looking very, very promising.

So I do think we will get some of those under the current regime, even if we don't get permitting reform. But if we get permitting reform and or significant FERC action in the interregional space, I think we would get a lot more. All right, Rob, thanks for the update on the lines. We'll be back in another year and see if things have changed substantially from now. All right. We'll be ready for.

for it. Good to talk to you, Shale. Rob Gremlick is the founder and president of Grid Strategies. This show is a production of Latitude Media. You can head over to Latitude Media.com for links to today's topics. Latitude is supported by Prelude Ventures. This episode was produced by Daniel Waldorf, mixing and theme song by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst.