3.1.23 - How a $6B transmission project made it in New York
' When Transmission Developers Inc. announced plans for an underwater power line from Quebec to Queens, George W. Bush was president and Joe Biden was a senator.
Fifteen years later, the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is on the way to completion — making it a rare success story in a country where major transmission lines have often stalled.
For the Biden administration to reach its clean energy goals, miles of long-distance power lines need to be built in the next decade to connect new clean energy projects to cities and towns. But getting those lines approved and paid for — and surviving legal challenges from project opponents — has often been a challenge.
That reality is putting renewed attention on CHPE — pronounced “chippy” — as a potential model for New York and elsewhere. New York officials are counting on the project to help clean up New York City’s fossil fuel-heavy grid and enable the shutdown of some of the dirtiest power plants in the state.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from Transmission Developers’ yearslong quest to get its 339-mile power line to the construction phase, it may be that playing the long game pays off.
“In certain respects, [CHPE] is arguably a model. There are aspects of it where you could point it and say, ‘This worked,’” said Justin Gundlach, senior regulatory manager at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, based in New York City. “But it’s worth keeping in mind that it took a very long time.”
Throughout the 2010s, overall investments in the transmission system declined nationwide, making it harder for solar, wind and other energy projects to connect to the grid, the Department of Energy said in a recent report. In New York, 84 percent of the wires and electrical stations that make up the grid were built prior to the 1980s.
Once it enters service in the spring of 2026, CHPE will be the largest transmission line in the U.S. built entirely underwater and underground. Being mostly out of sight may have helped appease potential opponents, observers said.
With a total cost of about $6 billion, the project will transmit hydropower from a network of dams in Canada owned by Hydro-Québec. Unlike solar and wind power that ebbs and flows with the weather, the hydropower will be able to meet the electricity needs of the nation’s largest city at virtually any hour.
“We’re expecting it to provide about 20 percent of New York City’s [electricity] needs, which is pretty substantial,” said Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters.
That’s significant considering the gap between New York’s clean energy goals and its current energy mix. The state aims to generate 70 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030, and 100 percent of its electricity from zero-emissions resources by 2040. In 2021, less than a third of New York’s electricity came from solar, wind and hydropower. '