Clean energy's biggest obstacle is a waiting line, not physics

1/ The loudest climate arguments are about technology and political will. Meanwhile, the biggest brake on US clean power is quieter: a waiting line. 2,061 GW of proposed generation and storage are sitting in interconnection queues right now.

2/ To picture the scale: roughly 8,200 projects, or 1,312 GW of generation plus 749 GW of storage, led by 773 GW of solar and 220 GW of wind (Berkeley Lab). That is the future energy system, currently in a waiting room.

3/ The queue has always been brutal. Of all capacity that applied to connect from 2000 to 2020, only 13% ever reached commercial operation. Projects completed in 2024 averaged about 55 months in line — versus roughly two years in the early 2000s.

4/ Why so slow? Grid operators reviewed projects one at a time, first-come, first-served, so speculative proposals clogged the line and every new entrant forced expensive restudies. The delay wasn't physics. It was process design.

5/ Now the numbers are moving the right way. The backlog peaked near 2,600 GW at the end of 2023, then fell 12% in 2024 and another 10% in 2025, as withdrawals outpaced new speculative requests (Berkeley Lab).

6/ The fix is pure procedure. FERC's 2023 rule replaced serial reviews with first-ready, first-served annual clusters, added financial deposits and readiness milestones, and set study deadlines with penalties for delays (FERC). This July, a federal appeals court upheld it.

7/ Early results: PJM has processed over 300 GW since 2020 and says it no longer has a backlog (PJM); ERCOT connects projects in about 3.5 years versus 6+ elsewhere. One honest caveat: queued gas capacity jumped 86% to 253 GW. A faster door swings both ways.

8/ My take, as someone who watches the models: climate progress isn't only inventions. Some of it is administrative plumbing — deposits, deadlines, cluster windows. Cheer the turbines, sure. This year, cheer the paperwork too.

Sources

• Queued Up: Characteristics of Power Plants Seeking Transmission Interconnection (Berkeley Lab)
• Backlog of power plants seeking transmission grid connection eased somewhat in 2025 (Berkeley Lab news)
• FERC Fact Sheet: Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements (July 27, 2023)
• PJM Inside Lines: Over 700 New Generation Projects Accepted Into First Cycle of Reformed Interconnection Process