Nevada and Utah, with reputations for being excellent places to do business, are seeing an influx of manufacturing facilities, technology companies and people who want to move here. With that economic opportunity comes a need for more electricity. As governors of Western states, we see this moment as a defining test of whether the region will lead the next generation of industry or fall behind. Meeting that moment will require building the modern energy system our states need to compete and thrive. However, our society is asking more of an electric grid that was not built for our modern energy needs.

Transmission, the poles and wires that move electricity from where it is produced to our cities and towns, is critical to reliable, affordable power for families and businesses, and the economic growth that comes with it. For years, incremental upgrades and targeted fixes have helped keep the lights on, but our needs are different today. Over the next decade, advanced manufacturing, electrification and frontier technologies are expected to drive a 30 percent increase in energy demand, a challenge that cannot be met by states acting alone.

Nevada and Utah sit along critical regional transmission pathways, serving as energy highways across the West that move electricity between resources and the communities that depend on them. When energy projects in our states are delayed, the impacts ripple across the West, ultimately affecting reliability, increasing grid congestion and raising costs for families and businesses. Estimates suggest that we need at least 12,600 miles of new or upgraded transmission lines over the next decade.

To build transmission faster, we need to work regionally. Transmission is often developed state by state and must be permitted by multiple jurisdictions, creating fragmentation and delays. That approach will not deliver the scale or speed of today’s energy demands. Meeting the needs of the next decade will require a more coordinated approach.

Utah’s Operation Gigawatt, a commitment to double reliable energy production in the next decade, reflects the same urgency driving this regional effort. Increasing transmission capacity so more power can be placed on the grid and moved to where it’s needed is a key tenet within the initiative and is critical if we want reliable, affordable power for families and businesses across Utah and Nevada. Given this need, Nevada’s focus on expanded production, grid resiliency and transmission has been a cornerstone of the state’s mission for the last three years.

Nevada is utilizing everything at its disposal, supporting more than 7.2 gigawatts of new solar and geothermal projects through the National Energy Dominance Council and preparing to bring nearly 300 miles of interstate transmission line into connection within its borders and as a key export to surrounding states. These efforts have been monumental and keep Nevada and the region headed in the right direction, but more must be done. The scale of what we need to build demands a different approach to how we plan.

Transmission infrastructure is most valuable when it stretches across state lines, and the decisions made in one state ripple across the region. Planning project by project, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, is not just inefficient; it has produced a fragmented system that is too slow and too costly for the moment we are in. What the West needs is a shared, regional view of where we need to go. WestTEC is the first effort to provide that. This first-of-its-kind, multi-stakeholder roadmap identifies the scale of investment required, the priority corridors and critically, how these investments work together as a system to strengthen reliability, lower costs and move power across the region to serve our economies.

That is why Utah and Nevada, along with nine other states, have endorsed the WestTEC process and its findings for the future of our region. But planning alone is not enough: We need action.

As the governors of Utah and Nevada, we are prepared to act. The Energy Superabundance Initiative has shown that it is important for states to lead on transmission siting and permitting. Our states are helping lead the region by standing up a Western Governors Transmission Permitting Alignment and Coordination Task Force, which will provide a durable forum and framework to facilitate state leadership and coordination among state agencies, counties and Tribes on multi-state and regional high-voltage transmission permitting in the West.

The West has always led by building big infrastructure and big industries and having big ideas. Meeting this moment requires that same Western spirit and grit, and this is our opportunity to build the backbone of an energy superabundant future. By working together across the West, we can deliver a stronger grid and a more prosperous future for our states and the region. Let’s get to work! Spencer Cox (R) is the governor of Utah. Joe Lombardo (R) is the governor of Nevada.