The constraint that doesn’t poll

Public conversation about the energy transition tends to focus on generation: solar arrays, wind farms, nuclear restarts. The harder problem is transmission — the high-voltage lines that move electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s used.

A solar farm without an interconnection is a field. A wind project stuck in a multi-year interconnection queue is a press release. The numbers tell the story: in most US grid regions, terawatts of clean generation now sit waiting in interconnection queues that stretch four to six years.

Why it’s stuck

Three reasons, layered:

1. Permitting friction. Federal, state, and local approval processes were designed for a world where most new generation was built next to existing infrastructure. Long-distance transmission crosses dozens of jurisdictions.
2. Cost allocation fights. Transmission benefits multiple parties — generators, ratepayers, neighboring regions. Disputes over who pays drag projects out for years.
3. Interconnection queue mechanics. The first-come-first-served model used by most regional transmission organizations is gameable and slow.

What unsticks it

• FERC reform. Rules that require regional planning to consider long-term needs, not just current ones, and that allocate costs across beneficiaries.
• Federal siting backstop authority. When states block projects of clear interregional benefit, federal authority to override — narrowly used, but available.
• Queue reform. Cluster studies, deposit requirements, and ready-to-build prioritization, all of which several regions are now piloting.

The political opening

Unusually, this is an issue where industrial-policy progressives, climate advocates, and a slice of the deregulatory right find themselves on the same side of the argument. That alignment is fragile and worth using before it dissolves.