In its latest Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, released in March 2025, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)—the nation’s oldest engineering organization, founded in 1852—gave U.S. energy infrastructure a dismal D+, citing infrastructure aging, investment shortfalls, and a widening mismatch between grid capability and modern demands. The mark represents a downgrade from the C– rating the sector received in 2021, its last quadrennial report, which reflected early momentum around grid modernization. Still, the current D+ rating generally echoes previous grades over the past decade.
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According to the 2025 report, the U.S. energy system comprises more than 600,000 miles of transmission lines, 5.5 million miles of distribution lines, 180 million poles, and 79,000 substations, as well as 60 million distribution transformers, and extensive natural gas and petroleum pipelines. All of these serve a fleet of 12,500 utility-scale power plants. But that infrastructure is aging: 70% of transmission lines and transformers are more than 25 years old, 60% of circuit breakers exceed 30 years, and half of the nation’s gas pipelines date back to the 1950s and 1960s.
Worn and weathered—and in many cases operating well past their intended lifespans—components of the energy infrastructure are slipping into obsolescence, increasingly unable to accommodate the modern power system’s demands: two-way power flows, fast-ramping inverter-based resources, and a gauntlet of extreme weather, cybersecurity threats, and precision-driven load events. Despite recent federal investment, ASCE warns that spending has not kept pace with need, and that inflation and supply constraints have eroded the purchasing power of public dollars. Distribution transformer lead times, for example, now average 120 weeks, up from 50 just three years ago, and prices have surged 60% to 80%
The implications are increasingly visible, ASCE notes. While weather-related events have accounted for 80% of major grid outages since 2000, much of the system still lacks basic hardening. Aging transformers, deteriorating substations, and overloaded distribution lines have become liabilities as utilities battle against outages, wildfires, and storm-related damage. On the gas pipeline side, between 2013 and 2022, the U.S. reported more than 1,100 significant incidents, resulting in more than $4 billion in damage, 470 injuries, and 90 deaths. Without sustained investment and coordination, ASCE warns, the energy system risks becoming a structural bottleneck to economic growth, public safety, and national resilience.
To reverse the decline, ASCE calls for a comprehensive modernization strategy that focuses on expanding capacity, deploying advanced technologies, and accelerating project timelines. Its top recommendations include increasing sustained investment; streamlining permitting and siting processes for both transmission lines and natural gas pipelines; creating cost-recovery mechanisms that support innovation and a more flexible grid; and improving coordination among federal agencies, state regulators, and utility operators. ASCE also highlights an urgent need to strengthen the energy workforce, warning that deployment timelines will falter without enough skilled labor to implement system upgrades at scale.