Peter Zeihan

One of the problems we have in the United States is because the period from roughly 1985 until roughly 2020 is

It was a period where we were moving towards higher and higher end industry that used more precision labor and more equipment, but less smelting and electrical work.

It meant that the amount of stuff that we were producing was actually going up in value, but the amount of power that we needed to do it was going down in value.

And as we moved from manufacturing and agriculture to a services economy, same thing, power demand stagnated or dropped.

until very, very recently, largely because of AI, but also because of the re-industrialization effort we're now going through because of the Chinese problems and de-globalization.

So for 35 years, we really didn't build out the grid because we didn't need to.

Now we need to.

And the biggest thing that is missing is high voltage, long range transmission lines, something that's like 70 kilovolts or higher.

The only part of the country right now that has spare transmission capacity is

It is this little triangle from Pittsburgh to St.

Louis to Chicago, Appalachia, coal country.

Because in the 67s and 80s, we had a number of administrations who realized, here's where the coal is.

It's cheaper to move electricity than coal.

So let's burn the coal locally and send the power out to the population centers.

So the federal government stepped in and helped push through all of this development work.

And so now this zone has like quadruple the long range transmission that they're using in some places less than a fifth.

It's the only place that could really build out what we need quickly.

Everywhere else in the country needs to build those lines before they think about things like nuclear power.

Because if you build nuclear power, you might be able to supply your city right there, but you're not going to be able to ship it anywhere else.

That's in part a regulatory issue, but it's mostly just hardware.