Renewable Energy

The Biden administration has unveiled plans to dramatically ramp up the nation’s offshore wind industry to help fulfill U.S. climate pledges. How realistic is the roadmap?

President Lopez Obrador’s plan to renationalize electricity generation will make it more expensive, dirtier and less reliable and jeopardize the inclusive economic growth he says he wants. 

With its clean energy matrix, the region could capitalize on the green transition—if leaders in Mexico and Brazil get with the program.

Katie Auth is policy director at the Energy for Growth Hub and former deputy coordinator of Power Africa at USAID. Todd Moss is executive director at the Hub and a former deputy assistant secretary of State for African Affairs. Rose Mutiso is research director at the Hub and former senior fellow at the Department of Energy and at the U.S. Senate. The new U.S. Climate Finance Plan aims to double contributions to climate funding for developing countries. A renewed emphasis on emerging economies is good news for the climate, but in presenting support as “protecting the world’s poorest” and helping “communities in need,” the plan reflects old thinking.  Climate finance is not charity to help the vulnerable or an incentive to reduce emissions. It is a rare opportunity to drive innovation and job creation across the world’s poorest economies. Portraying developing countries merely as victims in need of protection shortchanges both them and the window climate policy provides to recast international development, reframe climate justice, and advance U.S. diplomatic, development, and national security goals—particularly on the African continent.  Africa is home to the world’s youngest and fastest growing population, which is increasingly urban and digitally connected. Countries across sub-Saharan Africa need to build economies prosperous and diversified enough to create 12-15 million new jobs each year, and cope with worsening climate impacts. The future of U.S. relations with the continent—and its ability to effectively help address security, migration, and economic challenges there—depend largely on whether it can help catalyze ambitious energy transitions to meet dynamic and evolving needs. China, Russia, and other strategic competitors have already caught on.  Fortunately, the United States has a ready response: Power Africa. The multiagency initiative has bipartisan support and an eight-year track record. But a transformative impact requires taking Power Africa to the next level. To date, U.S. support for African energy has been most successful in catalyzing new (mostly) renewable generation and supporting off-grid solar companies in (mostly) rural areas. Both of these are valuable. But simply doing more of the same will not deliver a prosperous climate-resilient future. Many countries, hindered by limited grid systems, can now generate more power than their systems can absorb. And while off-grid solutions provide great value to certain populations, economy-wide job creation requires far larger-scale systems that can power cities, industry, and digital infrastructure. The Biden administration should strengthen Power Africa and similar programs in Asia and Latin America to meet the climate challenge and support U.S. foreign policy objectives. First, development capital must be focused in the countries where it will have the greatest effect. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a new agency with a $60 billion war chest, is Power Africa’s main source of capital. The DFC’s current strategy aims to put at least 60% of all projects in low- and lower-middle income countries or in fragile states, and at least $10 billion in the global energy sector by 2025. The DFC could also commit to specific targets in the African energy sector, where additionality and impact are especially high. A development-forward, risk-tolerant approach will ensure that climate finance drives investment not just in more advanced markets like Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa, but in economies where raising capital is hardest—like Niger, Liberia, or Malawi.  Second, in many low-income regions, climate resilience poses the most immediate and severe threat to lives and livelihoods. The U.S. Climate Finance Plan pledges to triple adaptation finance by 2024, but its impact will ultimately depend on whether funds are truly “new and additional.” Resilience programs should consider energy itself as a tool for adaptation. Rising temperatures, for example, require air conditioning and cold storage that depend on abundant reliable electricity. The International Energy Agency expects residential cooling demand in Africa to increase by at least factor a 5 by 2040.  Third, the administration’s plan recognizes that a global energy transition will require more than wind and solar plants. The Department of State is tasked to drive cooperation on energy storage and low-carbon transportation—both critical for emerging economies and a chance to expand opportunities for U.S. firms. The DFC should consider creating a specific early stage venture capital window for new clean energy technologies, just as the DFC’s predecessor agency seeded early private equity funds.  Fourth, the United States must get into the grid game. In most African countries, efforts to bring more renewable power online are hindered by inadequate transmission and distribution. The Millennium Challenge Corporation could scale up grant funds for grid infrastructure (as it did in Senegal), while the DFC could consider replicating the British CDC Group’s promising transmission investment platform. USAID could increase its technical assistance for grid performance and management, and identify early opportunities for DFC to invest in private utility concessions, rural electrification, and utility services companies. Power lines and computer systems may not make for glossy photo-ops, but they are essential building blocks for a clean energy future.  Finally, the United States needs to meet countries where they are. This means less finger wagging, a bit more humility, and a lot more financial support for the ambitious energy transitions African countries themselves have proposed. Many—including Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique, and Nigeria—see their domestic natural gas resources as key to expanding energy supply and shifting away from more carbon-intensive fuels. The U.S. Climate Finance Plan seeks to end international investment in fossil fuels, but acknowledges that “in limited circumstances, there may be a compelling development or national security reason” for continued U.S. support. Those reasons and the framework for evaluating them need to be clear.  For Africans, reliable abundant energy is the foundation for creating decent jobs and tackling climate change—just as it is for Americans. Achieving a clean energy transition will be the preeminent global challenge of the next half century. An ambitious U.S. effort to support this work in Africa and other emerging regions is smart policy for the climate, for national security, and for a prosperous and inclusive global economy.

China’s carbon emissions threaten global efforts to fight climate change. Its broader environmental degradation endangers economic growth, public health, and government legitimacy. Are Beijing’s policies enough?

This is a guest post by Zoe Dawson, a recent graduate of The Center for Global Affairs at New York University. She was previously an intern for Energy and Climate Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Approximately thirty-nine U.S. states have renewable or alternative portfolio standards (RPS), mandating a certain share of renewable power generation within a particular time frame. A small yet increasing number of states have set targets for 100 percent renewable generation. Eight states, including Washington DC and Puerto Rico, have committed to 100 percent clean generation by 2050 or earlier. The most ambitious target, recently set out by Rhode Island seeks to achieve 100 percent by 2030. In comparison to the European Union’s most recent announcement aiming to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, the overall percentage of US states pushing for 100 percent is still low. As we enter the 2020 election year+, it will be interesting to see whether support for renewable energy targets could play a role in the election campaigns. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans support a range of energy policy priorities; 71 percent in favor of increasing reliance on renewable energy sources and 69 percent who are in support of reducing dependence on foreign energy sources. Not surprisingly, democrats and democratic leaning independents give priority to protecting the environment as well as increasing reliance on renewable energy sources, while a larger share of Republicans put priority on reducing U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources. The midterm elections in 2016, highlighted greater concern for promoting more ambitious renewable energy targets. This was evident in Nevada, with Governor Steve Sisolak calling to increase Nevada’s 50 percent renewable generation by 2030 target to 100 percent by 2050. In Colorado, Jarded Polis is calling for 100 percent renewable energy by 2040. Even more notable, in Michigan, the state’s RPS became a selling point in the campaign. Gretchen Whitmer defeated the states Republican attorney general, Bill Schuette, renowned for his lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and opposition to clean energy and energy efficiency. Reflective of Schuette’s electoral defeat, Michigan’s two largest utilities committed in 2016 to boost the fuel mix to 50 percent renewables by 2030. Subsequently, in Illinois, Connecticut, Minnesota. Wisconsin, and New Mexico, elected officials are calling for the increase and establishment of 100 percent RPS targets. Since the midterm elections of 2016, a wave of state level clean energy policies are moving ahead through the eleven new Democratic governors that were elected, seven of which flipped previously from Republican seats. Wisconsin’s governor-elect, Democrat Tony Evers, defeated Scott Walker through a campaign that included pledging to join seventeen other governors committed to the goals of the Paris climate agreement. As more politicians and elected officials in the U.S. push to attain 100 percent renewable power generation, the next big question is around how this can be achieved? Over the last decade, the price of renewables has fallen dramatically. Wind energy has reduced in cost by some 70 percent since 2009 and solar has reduced by an extraordinary 88 percent. This has improved the economic viability of transforming the power sector, allowing the levelized cost of energy for wind and solar to become competitive with that of coal, natural gas and nuclear. However, the biggest challenge with increasing dependency on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar is their variability. Solar energy is only available during sunny daylight hours while wind supply can be intermittent at times. Currently, the state closest to meeting its renewable goals is Vermont, with in state electricity generation coming almost entirely (99.7 percent) from renewable sources, 60 percent of which comes from hydroelectric power. Vermont relies primarily on electricity imports, with the largest share of electricity consumed coming from hydroelectric generators in Canada. Behind Vermont follows Idaho, Washington, and Maine, similarly these states have cleaner power systems as a result of access to hydroelectric generating capacity. Hydropower differs from variable renewable energy resources such as wind and solar, given that is more consistently available with stable output and production. Excess hydro-capacity can be called upon at times of day or seasonally to supplement renewables, though its turbines, like natural gas peaking plants, have technical limitations and adjustments are not instantaneous. Thus, hydro is often used to help balance the grid, as a complimentary source to faster responding energy storage, solar or other power electronic based generator systems. Beyond extra capacity at existing hydroelectric plants, water sources can provide the possibility of pumped hydro storage. Pumped hydro operates through the use electricity-powered turbines, potentially solar for example, to pump water uphill in order to fill a reservoir. Then when electricity is needed, the water is released to flow through downhill turbines to generate electricity. To back up solar power, water is pumped uphill during the day using solar energy and then released when solar energy is no longer available. To the extent that water can be pumped uphill at nighttime --for example, using excess wind power--it can shift the availability of power from overnight generation to serve daytime loads, which adds significant value. Pumped storage hydroelectric power plants are the largest source of electricity storage technology used in the United States. This is both in terms of capacity and number of plants. While there are local variations of hydro inflow as a result of weather patterns, a large share of production capacity is flexible. The usage factor each month for pumped storage usually follows the pattern of electricity demand, a large peak during the summer, smaller peak in winter and the lowest use throughout the rest of the year. Hydropower in the United States currently makes up 7 percent of power generation and 52 percent of current renewable power generation. Roughly half of U.S. hydroelectric generation capacity is concentrated in Washington, California and Oregon. Across the U.S.–Canadian border, 37 major two-way transmission connections between Canada and New England, and Canada and the Pacific Northwest imported and exported 82.4 million mega watt-hours of U.S. and Canadian electricity in 2016. New England and New York accounted for 60 percent of total electricity imported to the U.S. from Canada in 2014, representing 12-16 percent of the regions retail sales of electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The Pacific Northwest is a net exporter to Canada due to its hydroelectric capacity generating electricity in excess of the region’s needs during high water periods. In 2017, Professor and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, Mark Jacobson released a report which suggested that all U.S. electricity generation could be met with mainly hydropower, wind, solar and storage to achieve 100 percent renewable generation. The study noted that hydropower, in addition to other storage systems like batteries, can be used to balance the variability of other renewable energy sources such as solar, which is not available in the nighttime, and wind that is sporadically intermittent. Battery storage is more cost effective and valuable at providing small amounts of stored energy over a short time at high power levels, while pumped hydro storage is more cost effective at storing and releasing larger amounts of stored energy over longer periods of time. A subsequent study questioned whether stationary energy storage solutions like batteries and the addition of turbines to existing and new hydroelectric dams or storing excess energy in water, ice and rocks could be sufficient to deliver a 100 percent renewables U.S. energy system.  The second study noted that multi-week battery storage systems have yet to be developed and suggested that the ability to develop swing hydroelectric electricity supply could be difficult since addition of turbines could require major reconstruction at existing facilities and the addition of additional supporting infrastructure. In some cases, competing uses for water and environmental constraints might prevent such expansion in hydroelectric capacity, according to the second study authors.   Another challenge to hydroelectric capacity is the possibility that dam removal is sometimes needed for ecological reasons. Given the geographical concentration of U.S. and Canadian hydropower, a decarbonized grid in many locations in the United States will have to rely heavily on wind and solar generation paired with energy storage including batteries. While the declining costs and technology maturation of lithium ion batteries is contributing to energy storage becoming a viable option throughout the United States, unresolved challenges persist for balancing solar power on a seasonal basis in some northern states where hours of sunshine are reduced in wintertime. Other grid organizational models are under study to solve this problem including conversion of renewable energy to hydrogen fuel that can be stored for later use and small-scale distributed energy models that allow smaller batteries to be deployed widely to individual users with diverse usage needs to enhance flexibility to the system. Australia has utilized such a system to stabilize electricity shortages in the Western part of the country. In the case of hydrogen conversion from renewable energy, the technology is still nascent, and some applications remain commercially too expensive to be competitive in today’s markets. Hydrogen fuel also requires special infrastructure given its chemical properties. The Nord Pool, which is a market based power exchange made up of nine Northern European countries is a good example of how increasing interconnectivity can serve as a way to integrate greater amounts of variable renewable energy on the power grid. Most notably, Denmark, which has nearly twice as much wind capacity per capita than any other nation (making up 43 percent of electricity generation) has been extremely successful in facilitating such a high penetration of weather dependent generation through enhancing grid flexibility and interconnectivity. Growing interconnectivity has allowed Denmark to increase its wind energy build. When Denmark is overproducing, it can sell excess power to neighboring countries including Norway, and when the wind is not blowing it can purchase power from its neighbors. The trading of wind and hydropower between Denmark and Norway, above all else, presents a good business case. On average, Norway usually has about a 10 percent hydro surplus every year. When Denmark is experiencing strong winds and/or Danish power demand is low, the price of Danish wind drops, providing profitable arbitrage opportunities for Norway. The planning for scale and encouragement of healthy competition has been critical to the growth of renewables in Europe. As individual states in the United States seek to advance their renewable energy targets, lessons should be drawn from cross-border coordination taking place in Europe and the leveraging of planned transmission infrastructure to provide resource flexibility and take advantage of economies of scale. In comparison, existing interconnectivity between United States and Canadian power markets has seen similar benefits; includes contributing to economic growth through delivering low cost power to formerly underserved regions in the Pacific Northwest. In New England, electricity imports from Quebec and New Brunswick have lowered wholesale power costs and deliver annual economic benefits in the range of $103 million to $471 million. As the U.S. presidential election approaches, election outcomes could be critical to the future pace of deployment of renewable energy in the United States. GOP efforts on carbon emissions have mainly been focusing on carbon sequestration rather than incentives for clean energy. Carbon Sequestration is favored by the fossil fuel industry but yet to be widely commercially deployable at scale. In addition, most Republican plans focus on free market solutions to the climate crisis as opposed to strictly regulating carbon emitters. Recent details on Republican climate plans places emphasis on planting trees, a natural method to sequester carbon. By contrast, the leading democratic Presidential candidates including Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar have all pledged to achieve 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050 or earlier. Democratic contender Michael Bloomberg, a long-time climate activist, released his plan for 100 percent clean energy. Bloomberg’s plan includes extending and expanding solar and wind tax credits and creating new tax incentives for private companies to improve clean energy technology, including battery storage and green hydrogen. No matter the result of the 2020 election, federal policy may not be the leading indicator in the United States where climate and energy policy has been propelled by states and cities. Given the popularity of renewable energy among U.S. constituencies and the falling cost of deployment, renewable energy expansion is likely to remain a major feature of the U.S. energy system in the coming years, catalyzed by state and local policies.  

This guest post is co-authored by Joshua Busby, associate professor of public affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, Sarang Shidore, a visiting scholar at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, and Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute and a professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Increasing interconnection of electricity systems both within and between countries has much promise to help support clean energy power systems of the future. If the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing in one place, an electricity grid with high voltage transmission lines can move electricity to where it is needed. This shared infrastructure and increased trade can possibly serve as a basis for peace between neighbors in conflict, but it may also serve as a tool of coercion if the electricity can be cut off by one party. Cross-border trade in electricity is currently dominated by Europe – 90% of the $5.6bn electricity trade market happens there, but in the future increased trade in electricity, particularly in Asia, is set to grow dramatically. The boldest proposal comes from the Chinese organization GEIDCO which has, with the backing of the State Grid Corporation of China (which reportedly has over 1 million employees), promoted regional and even global grid integration. On the one hand, such grid integration could foster greater interdependence in conflict zones and facilitate more shared interests. But there is another concern, what we call a strategic denial of service. This would be a form of what Farrell and Newman refer to as “weaponized interdependence,” a situation where one country uses a shared relationship asymmetrically to extract political concessions from another party. Emerging economies China is providing ample financial support for electricity and energy initiatives through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As much as two thirds of BRI projects, worth some $50 billion, has been invested in the energy sector. Some observers have already raised concerns about what China’s overtures in this space might mean for its neighbors. Phillip Cornell, writing for the Atlantic Council, warned that despite the benefits of grid integration: "Even if local grids are independently operated, deep interconnection means that supply and demand will increasingly be      matched across the super-grid, making them more interdependent. It may be managed by 'international rules and operation code' as Liu [Zhenya, GEIDCO's chairman] insists, but those will be defined by a regional authority where China is bound to have major influence." The scope for cross-border trade in electricity isn’t only Chinese-led. Even as India has been trying to integrate its domestic grid through what it calls green energy corridors, the country is also supplying electricity to some of its neighbors. India already exports some 660MW to Bangladesh, and Indian firms are building power plants which could meet as much as 25% of Bangladesh’s electricity needs. While India is currently supplying power to Nepal, Nepal has the potential capacity to supply hydroelectric power to India. Nepal and Bangladesh are also considering electricity trade through the intermediate Indian network. Hydro plants in the Mekong Delta from Laos already supply electricity to neighboring Thailand, making it its top source of foreign exchange. Other projects include CASA 1000, a proposed power line to link the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan as well as an interconnection linking a hydro power station in Malaysia’s Sarawak to West Kalimantan that should diminish Indonesia’s dependence on imported oil. Can electricity be used coercively? Can a state use electricity as a coercive tool like the way Russia has used natural gas? Is this technically possible? What are the limits? In the case of gas, you have a product that can be physically stored for periods of time, whereas electricity is a much more ephemeral product that, absent viable storage at scale, is lost as waste heat if not transmitted to end users. Though a breakthrough in storage might take away some of the urgency of the threat of service denial, it wouldn’t remove it in the event of a prolonged outage. Technically, the process of denial of electricity service is not all that difficult. Shutting down power service across a transmission system is just a matter of operations control (in the absence of good governance, power markets, contracts, etc. that are all in place to avoid disconnection of service). It can be done virtually instantaneously to disconnect power from any node on the system. Think of “rolling blackouts or brownouts” when different parts of a service area are shut down for various technical or economic reasons. Curtailing electricity to another country is potentially costly for the coercer. Curtailing electricity transmission to a neighbor does mean foregoing payments for the electricity (provided the neighbor was paying their bills). But, it could be one that states will use to generate benefits such as higher rates of payment for electricity or, more broadly, to extract concessions on other matters of political importance. For some energy sources like hydro power, the water has other potential uses. This could enhance the attractiveness of using service denial as a coercive tool since the owner of the hydro could presumably monetize its water in another way. A state might try to insulate its vulnerability to service denial through widespread conservation or building in extra reserve capacity, but in some settings and seasons, demand reduction might not be so easy to achieve. A country might be able to find alternative sources of electricity either from other neighbors or by powering up more expensive domestic sources of generation, though those arrangements could take time or prove much more costly than the existing cross-border arrangement. The flipside of denial of service would be demand curtailment, which a state might pursue if it was attempting to punish a neighboring electricity supplier by reducing its revenues.  Has this been done? During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was able to maintain dominance over Eastern and Central Europe by tying their energy supplies to the Soviet energy grid, reducing their scope for independent action. Though privatization in the early years of the break-up of the Soviet Union provided these countries with more independence, Gazprom made a conscious effort to acquire assets back under Russian control, sometimes under commercial conditions that could be construed as coercive, particularly in the natural gas space. Baltic states and Poland remained tethered to the Russian electricity grid. It was not until 2018 that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland completed an agreement to decouple from Russia and transition to the EU grid by 2025 at the cost of $1.2 billion. Fears of potential Russian service denials helped them overcome remaining obstacles. There have also been some examples in the post-Cold War era of denial of service and other forms of coercion related to integrated grids and interdependence. In July 2018, Iran cut off a portion of power to Iraq over unpaid fees in the midst of a summer a heat wave. While this may have merely been to ensure Iraq paid its balance, other states have employed similar tactics for more expansive purposes. In February 2019, the Trump Administration threatened secondary sanctions on Iraq to discourage its purchase of imported Iranian electricity and natural gas. Here, the service denial is not by the generator but by an influential third-party who has its own political axe to grind with the Iranians. In June 2019, the United States provided Iraq with a temporary four-month sanctions waiver to allow Iraq to get through the summer by importing products from Iran, lest the country experience a wave of unrest as it did in 2018 when Iran cut the power.  In May 2019, the United States and the Maduro government in Venezuela clashed over the rightful ruler of the country. Before and after the departure of Venezuela’s diplomats, left-wing U.S. protesters occupied the Venezuela embassy in Washington, D.C. to prevent supporters of the opposition Juan Guaidó from seizing the embassy. In the midst of the dispute, the power to the embassy was cut off by the electricity provider PEPCO, raising questions about political involvement by the Trump administration. If we think of the embassy as sovereign territory of Venezuela, this would qualify as a case of cross-border service denial and speaks to the potential vulnerability of other such enclaves such as military bases that may depend upon electricity grids of host countries. In July 2016, Turkey temporarily cut power to the major US airbase in Incirlik in the wake of the coup attempt against President Erdoğan, underscoring these concerns about base vulnerability. Cyber-security experts have also raised the prospect of denial of service by hackers who might be able to penetrate an electricity grid and take it off line. Given that communications, transport, and health care infrastructure all rely on electricity, the cascading effects of such an outage could have far-reaching consequences. If carried out by shadowy non-state actors, it might also be harder to attribute responsibility to a state actor. In December 2015, in the first known instance, Russian hackers were able to briefly take off line three Ukrainian distribution companies. Which states might deploy this strategy? We are more likely to see strategic denial of service where markets and contracts give private actors limited legal recourse in the event of supply disruptions. Moreover, strategic denial of service may be more common where there are large power asymmetries between neighbors, particularly but not limited to non-democracies. The more powerful state can use the size of its military apparatus or economy as additional leverage to extract concessions. In our view, we are less likely to see a poorer, smaller country like Nepal or Lesotho try to deny electricity to a more powerful neighbor, given the risks of reprisals. Similarly, in the event of demand curtailment, we might see powerful states use this tactic against neighbors that are highly reliant on electricity export revenue. As Farrell and Newman argue, those that control central nodes are likely to possess asymmetric power at key chokepoints: “Specifically, states with political authority over the central nodes in the international networked structures through which money, goods, and information travel are uniquely positioned to impose costs on others.” In a bilateral sense, a small chokepoint would be the ability for one country to deny service to one downstream power importer, but if a single actor exercises control upstream over the entire transmission network, that would provide them with asymmetric power over a wider group of actors. If no state controls a single node but several states together control electricity exports, that would require the kind of collective action that is less likely to occur in most regions of the world. In the event that the ambitious Desertec project moves forward, a study of the scope for North African countries to use renewable energy denial to Europe concluded that it was unlikely to succeed unless all five exporter countries curtailed service. Authoritarian countries may use this tactic more than democracies. In authoritarian governments, private actors may have less arms-length relationships with the government and thus be susceptible to pressure to cut off service to foreign countries. However, powerful democratic countries may also use this tactic against adversaries and non-democracies. Outside the electricity space, we have even seen the United States try to use its control of SWIFT banking system to coerce other democracies to avoid trade with Iran. In the electricity arena, it is less clear when democracies might use denial of electricity as a tactic. That said, if the U.S. government did in fact have a role behind the scenes in cutting off power to the Venezuelan embassy, this would be an example. As countries seek to balance their electricity needs to have the cheapest, greenest source of power when they need it, they may become both importers and exporters of energy. This may reduce the temptation for a state to unilaterally cut off electricity to its neighbor, lest the whole cooperative relationship fall apart. However, in a world of increasing concerns about sovereignty, we may see fewer of these interconnections to start with, absent confidence building measures and institutions. Can this tactic be prevented? To reduce the risks of coercive actions in cross border electricity trade, regional governance treaties and related multinational institutions should be created to oversee the implementation of agreements for the grid's operation. This could be akin to a neutral regional grid operator that has representation from all countries. ASEAN, for example, is helping develop the regulatory framework as the ASEAN Power Grid is built and knits countries together. OLADE -- the Organización de Energia Latinoamerica – is seeking to play a similar role in Latin America. Ideally, markets, contracts, and legal forms of dispute resolution would also help ensure that politically motivated service denials do not happen, but market mechanisms on their own are unlikely to establish confidence in grid integration across borders. Regional institutions remain an important means of regulating the trade, along the lines of transborder water governance that Lucia De Stefano and collaborators write about in terms of institutions to apportion water, deal with shocks, and carry out dispute resolution. Chinese acquisition of electricity assets in Portugal, Greece, and Italy have led Europeans to raise questions about whether existing forums for transmission operators such as ENTSO-E ought to be elevated to a regulatory body. Other regions are likely to be even less coordinated in terms of regulatory oversight. As Cornell points out, the vision for GEIDCO from the founder is one of decentralized, technical administration like the internet, without central control, but that actually betrays how the internet is subject to national level suppression as we have seen in countries like China with the Great Firewall. Other new Chinese-led institutions like the AIIB are subject to multilateral oversight, suggesting a governance model that might attenuate some of these concerns. In the absence of institutions to guard against politically motivated service denials, countries will remain disconnected or even seek to decouple their systems from neighbors deemed too risky. In much of the electricity space where the potential is largely untapped, it would mean foregoing many of the benefits associated with integrated grids. Poorer, weaker countries needing power might have few options and accept the Faustian bargain that puts them at the mercies of more powerful neighbors. At a moment when our collective emissions of greenhouse gases already have tied us together in mutual vulnerability to climate change, it would be a shame if joint efforts to address the problem got caught up in the return of great power politics.  

The wind industry is approaching the end of its federal financial support. Political leaders around the country are debating the best ways to continue supporting the wind industry.

While solar panels, electric buses, and wind turbines emerge, fossil fuel usage and demand for commodities continue to degrade Latin America’s environment.