The problem

Three hundred years.

That is how long it would take to close the U.S. transmission shortage at the rate new high-voltage line is actually being built. The generation exists. The projects are financed. What is missing is a path from one to the other.

The queue is bigger than the grid

Installed today

1,330 GW

Total U.S. generation capacity, against 690 GW of nominal output.

Waiting in line

2,061 GW

1,312 GW of new generation and 749 GW of energy storage, stuck in interconnection queues.

The ratio

1.5×

The queue is half again the size of the entire installed grid. It is not waiting on capital. It is waiting on wire.

Active U.S. interconnection queue capacity by project location

Generation isn’t the shortage

U.S. annual generation has been flat since 2005 while China’s has more than quadrupled. That is not a failure to build power plants — developers have thousands of gigawatts ready to go. It is a failure to connect them. The constraint is transmission and interconnection, and it takes projects off the board before they are ever built.

4,300 TWh

U.S. annual generation, flat since 2005, while China has more than quadrupled. EIA, 2024 · Our World in Data / Ember

2,000+ GW

of energy projects waiting in interconnection queues. U.S. DOE, 2025

88%

of queued projects will be withdrawn or rejected because of grid constraints. IBISWorld, 2024

U.S. electricity generation is flat while China’s has grown 74% since 2014

The wire isn’t coming

High-voltage transmission at 345 kV and 500 kV is the limiting factor on new generation, and recent changes to energy policy have scrapped transmission-line and grid-modernization projects that were already planned. Fewer than a thousand miles a year have been built since 2010, against a shortage of more than three hundred thousand. At that pace the gap takes over three centuries to close.

300,000+ mi

the 2026 transmission shortage.

<1,000 mi/yr

of 345 kV and 500 kV line actually built, on average, since 2010. Grid Strategies, July 2025

~20 years

to permit and build a new line — and many are never built.

Miles of new 345 kV and above transmission added to the U.S. grid each year

The alternative

The corridor already exists.

140,000 route-miles of freight railroad already reach nearly every generator and every load in North America. We use it as the wire, and energize a site in as little as twelve months from financing — see how it works.

SOURCES · U.S. EIA, installed capacity · Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, interconnection-queue data · U.S. DOE, 2025 · IBISWorld, 2024 · Our World in Data / Ember · Grid Strategies, July 2025