11.30.21 - Ending a tale of Two Power Grids
'Clean power is being generated in upstate New York, but it is not reaching New York City, the area that relies most heavily on power from fossil fuels.
That is because New York effectively has two separate electrical grids: one upstate, where most of the state’s growing clean-power supply is generated, the other in and around New York City. The transmission lines that connect the two cannot carry more power.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced two massive transmission-line projects to help bridge the divide and deliver renewable energy directly to New York City. Environmental advocates hope the two projects are a sign that she is stepping up the state’s efforts to address climate change.
The clock is running. By law, New York has just nine years to bolster the share of the electricity it uses that is generated from wind, sun and water to 70 percent, from less than 30 percent today.
As my colleagues Anne Barnard and Grace Ashford write, reaching that target will require unifying the state’s electrical grid — and reshaping it to work less like a one-way transmitter and more like an ecosystem. On blustery days it should be able to send surplus wind power from turbines off Long Island to consumers upstate. In the summer it should be able to send energy south from rural solar farms to the city.
Together with recently approved offshore wind projects, the transmission lines put the state on track to meet its 2030 goal. The path to a tougher target — drawing 100 percent of the state’s energy from renewable or nuclear sources by 2040 — is less clear.
One of the new transmission lines, called Clean Path New York, will stretch 179 miles from Delaware County in the Western Catskills to a substation on the East River. It will tap the state’s growing wind and solar energy supply, carrying it, mostly underground, along routes where the state already has the right to build power lines.
The private developers on the project include global energy developer Invenergy, which is building many renewable-energy projects upstate, and the real estate developer Related. The transmission line will give Related energy credits that it can sell to help offset penalties it expects to owe, under a new city law, for the fossil-fuel energy its buildings use — even its newest, most energy-efficient ones.
The other new line, the Champlain Hudson Power Express, will be almost twice as long, a buried cable from Canada down the Hudson River to the city. It will pull down enough hydropower to deliver 20 percent of the energy New York City uses on an average day. Sophie Brochu, president and chief executive of Canada’s state-owned utility, Hydro-Québec, which will supply the power, called it “an umbilical cord” between dams in the far reaches of Québec and Queens.
In the 10 years since the line was proposed, its promised output has grown by a quarter as technology has improved. The route has changed as well, stretching and twisting in response to local opposition. In Canada, some Indigenous groups contended the export violates their territory and environment.
Transmission Developers, the Blackstone-backed company that will build and own the line, says it has worked closely with opponents to find safe solutions. And Hydro-Québec has offered a partnership stake with the Mohawk tribe, said a leader, Mike Delisle, although the details have not been worked out.
For Ms. Hochul’s administration, the benefits of the project — 1250 megawatts of reliable, renewable hydropower, delivered straight to New York City, with most permits already approved — outweighed any potential backlash.
“This is the place where the clean energy revolution is happening,” she said recently, breaking ground for another clean-energy project, in Genesee County, later adding: “It’s going to be an all-the-above approach.” '