Latest news
An Ohio-based company is protecting first responders around the world
With support from JPMorganChase, Fire-Dex is providing protective equipment to firefighters in 100 countries and all 50 states.
Learn moreLatest news
Veteran’s Unconventional Path to Landing her Dream Job in Tech
U.S. Army Veteran Ashley Wigfall transitioned to a civilian role and charted her path to technologist through mentorship and skills training at the JPMorgan Chase tech hub in Plano, Texas.
Learn more
Last year, JPMorganChase launched a $1.5 trillion, 10-year Security and Resiliency Initiative to finance and invest in the industries most critical to America's economic strength—from defense and critical minerals to advanced manufacturing and energy.
A core pillar of that initiative is grid resilience: Fostering electric infrastructure that can support the economy we're building, not just the one we inherited.
As a bank financing energy infrastructure, we see firsthand where capital is ready to deploy and where it is not. The gap between those two realities has never been more consequential.
The U.S. electric grid is one of the largest machines on Earth, and it is aging fast. Seventy percent of transmission lines are over 25 years old. The average large power transformer has been in service for 38 years—at or past the end of its useful life. Meanwhile, electricity demand is rising at rates not seen in a generation, driven by data centers, factory construction, and the electrification of everything from vehicles to heating. In the mid-Atlantic region alone, demand is expected to grow nearly five percent a year over the next decade. Yet in its most recent auction to secure future power supply, the region's grid operator came up short for the first time in its history.
The need for investment is enormous. But the barriers to putting money to work are not mainly financial. They are structural.
When connection timelines are predictable, when new technologies have clear paths to earn a return, and when permits move on a defined schedule, private investment can scale to meet the moment.
Heather Zichal and Michael Johnson
Across the country, nearly twice as much power generation is waiting for approval to plug into the grid as is currently operating on it. While all these projects will not materialize, today, developers and utilities cannot reliably forecast when they will be connected. This inefficient process delays new power resources from coming online to meet rapidly rising demand.
In addition, permitting processes slow progress, with overlapping requirements, unclear milestones, and timelines that can slip repeatedly even for projects that are ultimately approved. That uncertainty raises financing costs, lengthens procurement timeframes, and discourages investment in the grid upgrades needed for resilience.
Treating predictability as the core objective is a much more effective approach: establishing clear steps, enforcing decision timelines, and allocating scarce grid capacity transparently. The bipartisan passage of the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act in the House is a promising step in this direction—streamlining environmental reviews, clarifying when federal review is triggered, and streamlining judicial challenges. These types of reforms can give developers and their lenders the confidence to commit capital: clear rules and bounded timelines. As the legislation advances in the Senate, there is an opportunity to build on this foundation so that capital can flow wherever it is needed most.
Current incentive structures tend to favor traditional infrastructure, which can make it harder for operational and efficiency enhancing solutions to compete—even when they offer faster, more cost-effective outcomes. Unclear cost-recovery rules for tools like advanced conductors and grid-enhancing software add further uncertainty. Regulators are making progress—FERC's Order 1920 includes evaluating advanced transmission technologies alongside new-build options—but implementation remains uneven across regions.
For developers and their lenders, that level of unpredictability makes projects hard to finance. Capital doesn't flow into a black box.
The frustrating part is that solutions already exist. Software and advanced hardware can increase how much electricity existing power lines carry — without building anything new. Commercially effective solutions that are ready to deploy already exist. What they need is a regulatory environment that allows investment to flow.
Speed matters for a reason that deserves more attention: affordability. Household electricity debt in the U.S. has risen from $17.5 billion in 2023 to $23 billion today, with 21 million families behind on their bills. Rising costs reflect a range of pressures—aging infrastructure, resilience investments, and supply constraints among them. But when new generation and transmission take years longer than necessary to connect, it adds further strain to a system already under stress, and those compounding costs can land hardest on the families least able to absorb them.
We are working to bring together grid operators, technology companies, regulators, and policymakers across regions to find practical, near-term fixes and build support for bigger structural changes. When connection timelines are predictable, when new technologies have clear paths to earn a return, and when permits move on a defined schedule, private investment can scale to meet the moment.
The grid that powered the last century cannot carry this one. The capital, the technology, and the will to modernize it all exist. What's needed now is the speed to match.
This material has not been reviewed, endorsed, or otherwise approved by, and is not a work product of, any research department of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and/or its affiliates. Information contained in this document has been obtained from sources, including those publicly available, believed to be reliable, but no representation or warranty is made by the document’s author or JPMorganChase as to the quality, completeness, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement of such information. Sources of third-party information referred to herein retain all rights with respect to such data and use of such data by JPMorganChase herein shall not be deemed to grant a license to any third party. All information contained herein is as of the date referenced and is subject to change without notice.
