As rising energy demands push the U.S. toward a massive power grid expansion, a new MIT study is offering insight into how different policy approaches could shape the nation’s energy future—balancing cost, emissions, and reliability in complex ways.

The research, conducted by a team from the MIT Climate Policy Center, analyzed federal legislation aimed at strengthening the national grid, including the BIG WIRES Act, which would require each transmission region to share at least 30 percent of its peak load capacity with others by 2035. The findings appear in Nature Energy under the title “Implications of Policy-Driven Transmission Expansion on Costs, Emissions and Reliability in the United States.”

The team modeled two main scenarios for nationwide grid expansion. One approach focused on building more infrastructure in regions with strong renewable energy potential, such as the Midwest’s untapped wind resources. The second, described as a “prescriptive” approach, envisioned a more evenly distributed grid buildout with stronger national interconnections.

Each strategy, the study found, offers distinct advantages. A regionally focused expansion would cost about 1.13 percent less and cut carbon emissions by 3.65 percent compared to the prescriptive model. However, the nationally interconnected grid could dramatically improve reliability—reducing power outages caused by extreme weather by 39 percent in some cases.

“There’s a tradeoff between the two things that are most on policymakers’ minds: cost and reliability,” said Christopher Knittel, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of the paper. “The prescriptive approach ends up being better in the face of extreme weather and outages.”

To conduct their analysis, the researchers used MIT’s GenX energy generation model to simulate how legislative proposals, like the BIG WIRES Act, would influence future grid configurations. Results suggest that stronger national interconnections would help prevent crises such as the devastating Texas power outages in 2021 by ensuring electricity can flow across state lines during periods of peak stress.

“The U.S. grid is aging and it needs an upgrade,” said Juan Ramon L. Senga, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and lead author of the study. “Implementing these kinds of policies is an important step to improve the grid, lower costs, lower emissions, and improve reliability. Some progress is better than none.”

Still, cost considerations remain significant. As Senga noted, an “optimized” grid that concentrates infrastructure near high-potential renewable zones may be cheaper—but only modestly so. “It’s not that much cheaper,” he said. “It’s single percentage points.”

The study also highlights the environmental dimension. As Knittel explained, building more connections near low-cost renewable resources tends to reduce emissions naturally. “Emissions fall when you let the optimizing action take place,” he said.

Ultimately, the team suggests a hybrid pathway may be the most practical—combining national interconnectivity mandates with regional buildouts around renewable hotspots. “You can find a balance between these factors,” Senga noted, “where you still have an increase in reliability while also getting cost and emission reductions.”

The research underscores the growing collaboration between academic experts and policymakers. “Working with legislation as the basis for academic studies can be productive for everyone,” Knittel added. “Scholars get to test their models in real-world scenarios, and lawmakers get evidence-based assessments of how their proposals might perform.”

The study’s authors include Senga; Audun Botterud, principal research scientist in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems; John E. Parsons, deputy director for research at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Drew Story, managing director at MIT’s Policy Lab; and Knittel, the George P. Shultz Professor at MIT Sloa

As India battles increasingly severe heat waves that are pushing electricity demand to record highs, a new study warns that the country is trapped in a dangerous heat–power loop — and only rapid investment in renewable energy infrastructure, grid upgrades and storage can break it.

The report, Breaking the Cycle, released on 20 November 2025 by Climate Trends and Climate Compatible Futures, shows that heat waves alone contributed nearly 9% of the surge in national power demand during April–June 2024, driving up emissions and straining power systems across states.

The study finds that rising temperatures, heat waves, electricity demand and fossil-fuel use are “no longer separate problems but converging threats,” placing worsening pressure on India’s grid, public-health systems, and vulnerable communities.

Heat waves intensifying across India

The number of summer days crossing 40°C rose sharply in the latter half of the decade. Fourteen states recorded a 15% rise in heat intensity between 2015 and 2024.

Central and eastern states such as Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh faced an average of 50 heatwave days every year, while northern states including Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana saw the steepest temperature spikes.

Himalayan regions also showed sharp warming: Uttarakhand recorded an 11.2% rise in summer temperatures in 2024, along with a dramatic jump in heatwave days — from zero in 2023 to 25 in 2024. Ladakh saw a 9.1% increase.

A decade of rising demand and fossil-heavy peaks

India’s power system expanded from 285 GW in 2015 to 461 GW in 2024. Renewable energy capacity more than doubled — from 84 GW to 209 GW — but coal capacity also increased from 195 GW to 243 GW.

While renewables grew faster in absolute terms, coal remained the backbone during summer peaks. Over the decade:

• RE generation rose 121%
• Fossil-fuel generation rose 50%

Heat waves have pushed cooling demand sharply, increasing dependence on coal-heavy power generation and worsening emissions.

A heat–power–emissions trap

The increase in heat during the 2024 summer added 327 million tonnes of CO₂ in just the peak months. Over the last decade, summertime fossil-fuel use led to 2.5 gigatonnes of CO₂ emissions.

“Our research shows that increase in temperatures across India has consistently increased electricity demand predominantly for cooling needs, resulting in further dependence on fossil fuels. Meeting the summer power demand surge with fossil fuels has led to more emissions and air pollution, exacerbating climate change and worsening health crisis,” Dr. Manish Ram, CEO at Climate Compatible Futures, said in a media statement.

He added that the impacts fall disproportionately on rural areas and low-income communities who already struggle with energy access and heat vulnerability.

Storage, flexible generation and grid upgrades essential

The report argues that India cannot address heat waves and power shortages separately. Instead, it calls for urgent, large-scale investment in:

• Battery storage and pumped hydro
• Flexible renewable generation
• Smart grids and resilient transmission
• Demand-side management
• Urban cooling and distributed solar backups

“States hit by heat-driven spikes in power demand must urgently expand renewable energy and storage capacities to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels,” Dr. Ram said. “Impacts of continued use of fossil fuel for power generation are now being seen even in states that are mostly dependent on renewable energy, which necessitates better integration of renewables with storage and smart grids.”

Heat Action Plans are missing critical energy links

The report found that only four states, three cities and one district currently integrate renewable energy or storage solutions into their Heat Action Plans (HAPs).

Most HAPs lack:

• Renewable backup systems
• Cooling demand forecasting
• Energy resilience measures
• Grid stress assessments

The study concludes that future frameworks must embed renewable-powered cooling, distributed storage and smart-grid planning.

A climate and equity imperative

India’s annual temperature in 2024 rose 0.65°C above the 1991–2020 baseline, in line with global trends. The study notes that while India’s broader climate policies saved up to 440 MtCO₂ between 2015 and 2020, heat-driven fossil-fuel use is eroding those gains.

Aarti Khosla, Director of Climate Trends, said in a statement, “India’s heat waves and power shortages can no longer be treated as separate crises. They are converging. The only durable way out is to urgently upgrade our grid, invest in storage and enable flexible, climate-resilient electricity systems.”

She added, “Breaking this cycle is not just a climate imperative — it is an equity imperative for millions of Indians who are the least responsible but the most vulnerable to extreme heat.”

A rapid global shift to renewable energy, energy efficiency and methane cuts could halve the rate of global warming by 2040, dramatically altering the world’s climate trajectory, a new Climate Action Tracker (CAT) assessment finds.

The analysis shows that implementing the three core COP28 energy and methane goals—tripling renewable energy capacity, doubling energy efficiency improvements, and delivering steep methane cuts by 2030—would bring down projected warming from the current 2.6°C to 1.7°C by the end of the century.

Crucially, these actions would sharply slow near-term warming, reducing the pace of temperature rise by a third by 2035 and nearly half by 2040, compared to today’s rate of ~0.25°C per decade. This slowdown is critical not just for long-term climate goals but for immediate survival, the report stresses.

A Turning Point

The world is already struggling to cope with accelerating climate impacts. With ecosystems collapsing faster than species can adapt and communities facing worsening heatwaves, storms and crop failures, “catching up” on adaptation has become a global emergency.

CAT warns that under current policies, warming could continue rising throughout the century, leaving governments perpetually behind on adaptation planning. But halving the warming rate would give both people and ecosystems a fighting chance to adjust.

A 0.9°C Improvement in the Global Outlook

If all countries implement the three goals, the resulting emission cuts—14 GtCO₂e by 2030 and 18 GtCO₂e by 2035—would reduce expected warming this century by 0.9°C, one of the most significant improvements since the Paris Agreement.

“This is the single biggest step governments can take this decade, using goals they have already negotiated and agreed to,” the report notes.

Where the Reductions Come From

• Tripling renewables: ~40% of total emission reductions
• Doubling energy efficiency: ~40%
• Methane cuts: ~20%, but delivering disproportionate warming benefits due to methane’s strong short-term impact

Finance Is the Missing Link

The report underscores that technology is not the barrier—finance is. Many emerging economies cannot deploy renewables or upgrade grids at the necessary pace without scaled-up international support.

Still, the authors say the pathway is feasible and grounded in technologies already available at commercial scale.

While the world is almost certain to overshoot 1.5°C by the early 2030s, the duration and magnitude of that overshoot will determine future levels of loss and damage. Delivering the COP28 energy and methane goals, the report concludes, is the most powerful tool the world currently has to limit that overshoot and avoid runaway climate impacts.