By Betsy Vereckey

Renewables are more popular than ever, but there’s one big problem standing in the way of further adoption: The U.S. electric grid doesn’t have enough capacity to support them. 

“Right now, that's a big barrier to getting more wind and solar resources built—being able to connect to the power grid,” says Anna Foglesong D’02, T’08, managing director at Clean Grid Initiative, a philanthropy specializing in grantmaking to spearhead energy transmission. 

The U.S. needs more high-voltage transmission towers, but building them isn’t easy, in part because of a disconnect at the state, regional, and national levels. It’s no easy task, but Foglesong—who has an extensive background in utilities—has “always loved big, complex problems.” 

Foglesong’s resume includes stints at Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest utility, and at MISO, a grid operator—experiences that gave her a “boots-on-the-ground” perspective and deepened her expertise in policy and strategy. Electricity is a huge passion of hers, even though for most people, it’s something “that people don’t think about and talk about very much unless the power goes out,” she says.

A Seattle native, Foglesong relocated with her parents to Williamstown, Ma., as a child. Her father was an environmental studies professor who also worked in philanthropy. Says Foglesong, “I’ve ended up following in his footsteps a lot.”  

When Foglesong was a junior in high school, she attended The Mountain School for a semester on a farm in Vershire, Vt., which furthered her interest in sustainability. She attended Dartmouth and majored in psychology and brain sciences, with a minor in history. After graduation, she dabbled in consulting, then returned to Tuck, wanting a remote, intimate setting where she could really focus on her studies. She credits a summer internship at McKinsey as a valuable experience where she focused on climate change and carbon abatement. (She also met her husband John Foglesong T’08 at Tuck, too.)

Foglesong says it’s imperative that the U.S. expand the electric grid’s capacity. In her role at Clean Grid, she’s focusing on funding the creation of high-voltage transmission towers, which will allow more renewables to connect to the grid as well as enable more electric reliability. “Some of the big winter storms in Texas and on the East Coast caused blackouts that were largely due to the fact that there wasn't sufficient transmission capacity,” she says.

She predicts that the load on the grid will increase with the introduction of more data centers and further demand for electric vehicles. She likens this much-needed overhaul to President Eisenhower’s long-ago expansion of the U.S. interstate highway system, which required building new infrastructure in communities across the nation. 

“It took years to realize, but I don't think anyone could imagine the growth of the U.S. economy without that backbone system,” she says. “The clean energy transition will be a similar undertaking. It will be hard, but it's completely imperative that we transform the system in a way that makes it reliable, affordable, and sustainable.”

This story originally appeared in print in the Summer 2024 issue of Tuck Today magazine.