As Americans we believe that we are always the leaders when it comes to infrastructure and technology. That is not the case with electricity.

China already consumes twice as much electrical energy as the United States and is way ahead of us when it comes to the efficiency and capacity of their electric grid to transport energy, including renewable energy, across their country.

The most efficient way of transporting electricity anywhere is with high voltage electric lines. The higher the voltage, the more electricity that can be transported.

It is hard to build such lines in the United States. People want electricity as long as they aren’t impacted by high tension electric lines. Whenever such lines are proposed, environmental and various opposition groups unite to try to stop their construction.

Many years ago (the 1980’s) I served as a Trustee of the New York Power Authority. The Authority, at that time, had constructed a high voltage 765 kilovolt (KV) transmission line from the Canadian border to the Utica, NY area to bring in renewable hydro electricity from Quebec.

The only way we were able to continue that line to the New York City area was to agree to reduce the voltage to 345 KV and build two parallel lines of towers and wire from Utica down to Westchester County.

China has no such restrictions when it comes to building transmission lines. It is a dictatorship, and the government can do pretty much what it wants to.

We now have in the United States a total of about 2,000 miles of high voltage lines. In China, they have a total of 22 ultrahigh voltage lines (1,000 KV,) and one of them, by itself, is 2,000 miles long and runs most of the way across China.

China outproduces us with renewable electrical energy, but it also produces immense amounts of electricity with its coal-fired power plants. China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined. Its greenhouse gas emissions are greater than the United States and European Union combined.

Yet, when it comes to electrification itself, the driving energy resource of the future…the Chinese are light years ahead of us.

This also means, of course, that they are able to manufacture goods and products for export at costs greatly lower than we can in this country.

And, that brings us to tariffs. We can try to squeeze more from the Chinese by imposing tariffs on them, costs which are ultimately paid by the American consumer. But, that doesn’t address the deficiencies of our own energy system when it comes to manufacturing and the cost of producing goods here.

One of our biggest deficiencies is our lack of efficient electrical transmission lines in this country. The electrical system in the United States has been built on a state-by-state, lower voltage model. What we need is a national electrical transmission system–like our Interstate Highway system.

Will we ever get there? Not, it seems, in the near future. In the meantime, the Chinese will keep “eating our lunch” when it comes to the efficiency of their electrical infrastructure as compared to ours.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.