An article in the New York Times highlights a whole new problem with supposedly clean energy sources like wind and solar: using them for power generation on a large scale will require the construction of massive new electrical transmission infrastructure.

Before we get into it, let’s just note a few of the other problems with these energy sources: they still require the destructive mining of massive amounts of metals in communities throughout Latin America and the world, and the shipping of these and other raw materials over vast distances using fossil fuels; they are manufactured using a highly industrial, resource-intensive, fossil-fuel based infrastructure; the energy is distributed by means of the same destructive infrastructure; and, perhaps most importantly, they help prop up the entire system by feeding the whole cycle of endless production and consumption.

These last two points are highlighted by the Times article, which notes that while ambitious plans are already being laid to build massive wind and solar “farms” (if you can have a farm filled with machines, where nothing living grows), these power plants generate far more electricity than they can actually supply, due to the way the US power grid is currently constructed:

‘The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

‘”We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.’

You read that right: the feds are talking about building massive new transmission lines to move electric power from the wind-rich Great Plains and the sun-rich Southwest deserts to the population-dense coasts! In the words of the Times, the US Energy Department wants to build a “high-voltage backbone spanning the country.”

Sound familiar? It should! It’s the same basic concept as SIEPAC, the electric interconnection grid conceived as part of the Plan Puebla Panamá, intended in part to allow Mesoamerican dams like La Parota to supply US power consumption.

Issues of local jurisdiction are fortunately still complicating these plans, but the feds are moving aggressively to smooth out those obstacles:

‘In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.

‘Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.’

If built, this massive transmission “superhighway” would mean more resource extraction to build the lines, more ecological and community devastation wherever they pass, and more electric capacity on the US grid.

“Electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission,” the Times says — meaning that for all this talk of cleaner energy, all that’s really happening is that more power is being added to the grid. It’s not as if coal and nuclear plants and hydro dams are actually being taken offline.

The whole point of this “clean energy” discourse is to enable the survival of the system, to find a way to produce ever more electricity for ever more industrial production. But we’ve seen what that means, and we know that path is a dead end.