This is California Wire, a weekly newsletter from Jeff St. John on the state’s clean energy transition. Subscribe to get it every Wednesday via Substack.

Welcome back to California Wire! This week, I want to dive into a topic that’s both timely and timeless: transmission lines, and how long it takes to build them. California’s lagging grid buildout is holding back gigawatts of clean energy from connecting to the state’s grid. Policymakers and regulators have largely punted on the issue, creating a deficit that will take years to recover from, but they are finally taking some baby steps to address it.

To be clear, major power lines are notoriously difficult to build everywhere, not just in California. That’s why a big chunk of the permitting bill that emerged from the U.S. Senate last week is focused on lifting obstacles to new transmission. We’ll see where that goes.

But California’s climate targets make its transmission problems particularly acute. The state must add 7 to 8 gigawatts of capacity a year for the next two decades to meet those targets — roughly double its current pace of growth. And it won’t be able to do that without more power lines.

Of course, California knows it needs more transmission. The state grid operator has approved just under $28 billion in new projects over the past five years. But the major utilities are lagging on the follow-through.

Nearly 22 GW of renewable generation and battery installations ​ “ depend on transmission projects that have already experienced a delay in coming online,” according to a November 2025 report from the California Public Utilities Commission.

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