The United Kingdom needs a better electricity grid too, and it's going to cost £4.7 billion ($6.6 billion) over the next decade or so. That's the assessment of a report released Wednesday by the Electricity Networks Strategy Group, a government group looking at how to get 30 percent of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2020. That means 45 gigawatts of renewable power, of which about 34 gigawatts will come from wind power both on land and offshore, the group said. (The 30-percent renewable goal cited by the group is higher than the U.K.'s overall goal of getting 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020). That, plus adding about 10 gigawatts of new nuclear power generation, will require about 1,000 kilometers of new transmission lines and a host of improvements to the grid, the group said. Integrating new wind projects will require short-term investment in subsea high-voltage transmission cables between England and Scotland, since Scotland is expected to produce more power than it will consume and existing transmission to the south is at maximum capacity, the group noted. Scotland has a goal of making renewable energy 31 percent of its power supply by 2011 and 50 percent by 2020, up from 20 percent today (see Scotland's Green Push Comes From Oil). The U.K.'s grid costs pale in comparison to those in the United States, however. The Edison Electric Institute, an association of investor-owned utilities, estimates the costs of upgrading America's aging electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure to surpass $50 billion by 2012. That estimate does not include the costs of "smart grid" improvements meant to bring two-way communications to the grid to monitor power usage and outages, curb peak demand, reduce blackouts and integrate renewable energy and plug-in hybrid cars into the system, the institute noted (see The Year in Smart Grid). The stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama this month contains $11 billion for smart grid improvements, with $4.5 billion set aside for matching grants for smart grid projects (see Clean Energy, Smart Grid Stay in Stimulus Bill and Obama Signs Stimulus Package). Companies in the smart grid business have said that this kind of federal investment will pay off in hundreds of thousands of new jobs (see Smart Grid Backers Push Investment for Job Growth).