A 300-Mile Transmission Line Could Help Decarbonize the Southeast. Power Companies Want to Stop It [Video]

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When a winter storm knocked out Texas’ power grid in 2021, the scale of the devastation it wrought was exacerbated by a singular fact about the Lone Star State: It has its own electric grid, an “energy island” that has long been uniquely isolated from the rest of the country, with just four transmission lines linking it to neighboring states. When the storm hit, Texas was unable to transfer enough emergency power from other electricity markets to keep the lights on. The death toll was in the hundreds.

A new multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project could mitigate a similar power emergency in the future. For more than a decade, …