After decades of struggle, the U.S. clean-energy business is booming, with soaring electric car sales and fast growth in wind and solar power. That’s raising hopes for the fight against climate change.
All this progress, however, could be derailed without a massive overhaul of America’s antiquated electric infrastructure — a task some industry experts say requires more than $2 trillion (about ¥258.5 trillion). The current network of transmission wires, substations and transformers is decaying with age and underinvestment, a condition highlighted by catastrophic failures during increasingly frequent and severe weather events.
Power outages over the last six years have more than doubled in number compared to the previous six years, according to an examination of federal data. In the past two years, power systems have collapsed in Gulf Coast hurricanes, west coast wildfires, Midwest heat waves and a Texas deep freeze, causing long and sometimes deadly outages.