In 1932, Americans were doggedly trudging through year three of the Great Depression when a candidate for president spoke of "the human importance of electric power in our present social order … It lights our homes, our places of work and our streets. It turns the wheels of most of our transportation and our factories. In our homes it serves not only for light, but it can become the willing servant of the family in countless ways … Electricity is no longer a luxury," he declared. "It is a definite necessity."

Ninety years later, our national quest to provide the "necessity" that Franklin Roosevelt mentioned remains inexplicably out of reach. Simply put, the United States is facing an uncertain future where power shortages threaten our economy. In one fast-growing industry alone, data centers, the consumption of electricity is expected to double by the end of this decade. Adding to the demand is the rise in temperatures and storm severity in many parts of the country, threatening people's final refuge when the weather is too hot or too cold. At the heart of the problem are longstanding impediments to scaling up electricity transmission and distribution so power can more easily flow from one region to another. And of course, watching this unfold are nervous politicians who speak with increasing alarm of "grid reliability" and who fear having to explain why an investor chose to go elsewhere, or why their voters have no air conditioning in August.