Use of green energy hit an all-time high last year: Renewables produced nearly a third of the electricity used around the globe, according to a new report out from the global policy network REN-21.
That’s the good news. The bad news is even more green energy could have been used, but the electrical grids built decades ago can’t handle it. It turns out adapting a 20th-century grid to 21st-century energy sources is pretty complicated.
“The grid” isn’t just the transmission lines that crisscross the country. It’s everything from the generating stations to the outlets in your house.
It handles energy from coal, gas-powered and nuclear plants, all of which use the same basic technology to make power, said historian Julie Cohn, who wrote “The Grid: Biography of an American Technology.”
“They’re just something [that] is hot and creating steam that’s spinning a turbine,” she…
