An Argument for Free Buses, AI's Bad Week, and the Beginning of the End for Gas Cars

Here are some trends that I'm following

This is the forth edition of a new format I’m trying out on the Distilled newsletter. As I explained in the first edition, my plan is to share stories, charts, and interesting stuff I find while doing research for my longer stories.

Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:

• Clean energy and grid-scale batteries account for 88% of all under-construction power projects in the US.

• America has been building less transmission lines each year. But that could be changing based on some big recent announcements.

• Wall Street’s AI darlings got hammered last week. Some stocks fell by as much as 17%, despite Nvidia beating expectations last quarter.

• Many New Deal programs took months to implement. The Inflation Reduction Act took years. A group of former Biden staffers recently published a report explaining why.

• Progress against extreme poverty is slowing. In the next decade there will likely be more people living in extreme poverty than there are today—a sharp reversal.

• Iowa City made its buses free. Now ridership has surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 18 percent.

• We’ve already reached peak gas-combustion vehicle. Since 2019 internal combustion engine car sales have fallen by 31% globally.

• Utilities are forecasting 260% more data center power demand than they were just a year ago, according to a new report.

• Will oil and gas consumption rise over the next few decades? If you read any mainstream news stories on the topic over the last month, you may have been misled.

America is still building a lot of clean energy

One of the best ways to see the future of America’s electric grid is to look at what kind of power projects are under construction. Here’s a chart I made last week to peer into that future:

There are currently 668 power projects under construction in the US with a combined capacity of 72.5 GW, according to our project tracker at Cleanview.

Solar leads the construction pipeline with 39% of capacity, followed by wind (26%), batteries (23%) and natural gas (12%). That means clean energy and storage account for 88% of all under-construction projects.

Clean energy in America faces a lot of challenges right now. But everyday—despite all the headwinds—we’re building more clean energy projects.

I wrote more about this in Cleanview’s newsletter recently.

America is building transmission lines

There’s a saying that I like that goes “There’s no transition without transmission.” Every rapid energy transition scenario requires building a lot of high-voltage transmission lines to bring electricity from the windy plains and sunny deserts to populations centers.

The problem is that America isn’t really building any transmission infrastructure.

Between 2012 and 2016, an average of 2,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines were built in the United States. Between 2017 and 2021, that number fell to 700 miles. Last year, just 322 miles of high-voltage lines were built.

That might be changing soon though.