The American grid is in trouble. For years, our country has been retiring reliable power plants and building unreliable wind and solar resources. Moreover, most of the country’s power gets allocated in complex power markets where decisions are made beyond the public eye. And areas without markets still fall beneath the aegis of utilities, leviathans who toss their weight around in state politics and often get caught up in corruption schemes. These were problems when America’s power demand stayed flat for decades. Even then, potential solutions felt more like a dizzying labyrinth of rules, regulations, interest groups, and technical minutiae. A new reality of increasing power demand has only intensified both the need for grid reform and the difficulties of even understanding what needs reformation…

America wants to decarbonize. Tackling climate change has broad public support. The primary avenue we’re pursuing to achieve this goal is the decarbonization of our electricity system and “electrifying everything.” This is more than achievable; indeed, we have historical prece­dents. France’s nuclear buildout, beginning in the 1970s, achieved the greatest decarbonization in human history; since…