How far should renewable energy be transferred?

My view is that in the ideal world, there’d be no need to transport energy , at least not over long distances due to transport losses, investment needed and the opportunity cost of not developing decentralised generation. Where possible, generation should be as proximate as possible to consumption, augmented with inter-linked local distribution loops to stabilise supply and address imbalance of supply and demand would be the best option. This implies use of energy storage too. However as it is impossible to generate power locally in most geographies, then transportation is unavoidable-in this case this must be balanced with the economics of generation, transmission, distribution, ancillary services. Investment in transportation itself creates inertia against transition to distributed generation even where the latter may make make more economic sense. I feel this is driven by the ‘sunk’ investments and energy security concerns.
In summary, the benchmark distance for transportation does not really exist on its own but is rather a function of many factors such as cost and feasibility of generation, transportation (transmission, distribution), losses, ancillary services, overhead, maintenance, demand patterns etc

Thanks @SPSBadwal, @mikelandmeier and @AnthonyMburu for sharing these details. Its been very helpful in understanding the energy transfer space.