By Katie Tincello
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Just last month, a windstorm in northwest Indiana left nearly 375,000 homes without power. Some customers were without electricity for over two weeks. In the future, your home's backup energy supply will be sitting in your driveway.
Speakers at Newsweek’s Pillars of Stability event during Climate Week NYC 2026 suggested this future is nearer than it sounds as vehicles become part of the energy system.
From weak spot to superpower
Electric vehicles are already a widely recognized path to sustainable transport, and the transition is well underway.
Read More on Better Planet
“One in four vehicles bought today is an EV,” Cassandra Garber, chief sustainability officer at General Motors, told the Newsweek panel. But the shift has not been completely seamless.
“An EV can double someone’s home electricity consumption,” Sarah Russell-Smith, senior vice president or product and operations at Uplight, explained. *“*That’s an affordability challenge, and it puts more pressure on the grid.”
The U.S. Department of Energy describes the country's power grid as aging and heavily stressed. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects that 2026 and 2027 will be years of record energy consumption due to the new data centers coming online.
Yet, there is an unrealized potential that could turn demand into supply. “Bidirectional charging means that you can put energy in, and energy can come back out,” Garber explains. Every General Motors EV now has this capability, and combined with its home energy system, a car can power a house through a blackout for a week or longer.
With the right infrastructure in place, an EV is “something much more than a device for transportation. It’s a mobile energy asset,” Garber said.
According to Markets and Markets, The bidirectional charging market is projected to reach $844.1 million by 2035, up from $70.0 million in 2025.
The subway’s hidden power
Transport extends beyond cars. New York’s subway trains already capture energy when they brake and turn the motion back into electricity.
“We are trying to find a way to capture this [electricity] and send it back to the grid, or store it in batteries and use it to reduce peak loads,” Dana Mecomber, director of climate sustainable planning at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told the panel.
The MTA is also exploring how to turn the subway’s heat problem into a solution. A cooling system would be unfeasible, but it’s not the only option.
“We’re looking at how to capture that waste heat and reuse it beneficially for heating buildings above the stations," Mecomber told the Newsweek panel. It’s an innovative solution that would turn the problem on its head.
Infrastructure needs to catch up
None of this can be achieved without the frameworks to support it. “It’s all really old infrastructure. It’s really difficult to upgrade,” Mecomber said. In order to fully electrify its fleet of around 5,900 buses, the MTA must upgrade depots built for diesel buses, one by one, demanding time and money.
The MTA announced a goal of operating a zero-emissions fleet by 2040 but as technology has lagged behind targets, the transportation organization has turned to
Selling back power to the grid also means working with regulators in terms of compensation schemes. Policymakers are also yet to catch up. “We’re not really seeing the support on the policy side,” Mecomber told the panel. “If we get those aligned, we’ll see big benefits.”
Overall, panelists were optimistic. “I really think we can get there,” said Russell-Smith. If regulators and industry bodies recognize that affordability and sustainability go hand in hand, then the path to resilient transport systems will be laid without too many bumps in the road.
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