The main bottleneck in expanding the country’s power supply is not generating electricity, but connecting new power plants, especially from renewable sources, to the grid. Known as generator interconnection, this process has become increasingly slow and expensive.

there’s a mismatch between where transmission lines were historically built—often to serve fossil-fuel or nuclear plants—and where renewable power is generated and used. “What’s really different today is that where it makes sense to build new power plants is where there’s a lot of wind and where there’s a lot of sun,” said Hausman. “And that’s not necessarily near big demand centers.”