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<\/p>\nBob Harrison pushes open the door to a 70-foot tall industrial building in Astoria, Queens near the East River, revealing an array of electrical equipment spread out across a massive room. But what Harrison really wants to point out is a pair of black cables sticking out of the ground at one end of the space.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are the cables that come from Quebec,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
To get them to this room, Harrison\u2019s team designed special barges to drop the cables to the bottom of Lake Champlain. They buried them at the bottom of the Hudson River, and along roadways and railroad tracks in upstate New York. They drilled a hole from either side of the East River to meet in the middle, \u201cand we were off by about an inch, which is pretty spectacular,\u201d Harrison said.<\/p>\n
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The developers of the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) built special barges to install power cables at the bottom of Lake Champlain, seen here near Crown Point, NY<\/p>\n
TDI CHPExpress\/Courtesy<\/a><\/p>\n All that, to bring electricity over 330 miles from Quebec to New York City. The new power line is called the Champlain Hudson Power Express, and soon it will provide enough electricity \u2014 primarily generated by hydroelectric dams \u2014 to power 1 million New York City homes. Harrison has been working on the line for over 11 years.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at me, I’m an old, gray haired guy,\u201d he said. \u201c I have spent 25% of my professional career trying to get this project across the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n Bob Harrison, head engineer of the Champlain Hudson Power Express, has been working on the project for 11 years.<\/p>\n Henry Epp\/Marketplace<\/p>\n When it officially switches on, likely in June, CHPE will be the second of two transmission lines connecting the northeast to Quebec\u2019s grid to start delivering electricity in 2026. A line to Massachusetts powered up in January<\/a>. Both lines have been in the works for over a decade<\/a>. But in the years since they were proposed, the dynamics in the energy market of the northeast of North America have changed.<\/p>\n A decade ago, however, the connections made perfect sense.<\/p>\n At that time, Hydro Quebec, the government-owned utility north of the border that operates massive, decades-old dams in the north of the province, had plenty of energy to spare.<\/p>\n The new Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) line runs from Quebec down to New York City, including stretches beneath Lake Champlain and the Hudson River.<\/p>\n Courtesy TDI CHPExpress<\/p>\n \u201cWe had almost 15 years of above average water inflows in terms of rain coming into the reservoir of Hydro Quebec,\u201d said Pierre-Olivier Pineau, a professor of energy sector management at the business school HEC Montreal. \u201cIt gave an illusion of plentiness and abundance of hydropower.\u201d<\/p>\n So, the government of Quebec sought to sell off some of that perceived abundance to the northeastern U.S., where states, like New York and Massachusetts, were looking to get away from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n \u201cWe export relatively cheap hydro to the U.S., they pay us, and they decarbonize,\u201d Pineau explained. \u201cSo, everyone wins.\u201d<\/p>\n But 11 years later, now that the lines are finally installed after years of construction and local pushback<\/a>, Quebec\u2019s energy surplus is not what it used to be.<\/p>\n Much of the province has been in a drought for three years, so there\u2019s less water the utility can pass through its dams. Meanwhile, there are new industries and data centers north of the border that also want cheap hydropower, Pineau said. Plus, Quebec has decarbonization goals of its own<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSo now, these lines are not seen as such good deals, because people are starting to think, \u2018Well, we actually need the electricity in Quebec to decarbonize,\u2019\u201d Pineau said.<\/p>\n While Hydro Quebec is meeting all that domestic demand, it also needs to fulfill its contracts to send power to the south for the next 20-plus years. <\/p>\n Despite the run of dry years, Serge Abergel, COO of Hydro Quebec\u2019s U.S. arm, said the utility is in a good position to manage its power supply.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always manage it in a way to make sure that we have enough power to meet our firm commitments,\u201d he said. The company is also planning to invest billions<\/a> in new hydro, wind, and solar generation over the next decade.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, New York and Massachusetts are counting on ample power supplies from the north.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is going to meet 20% of the region’s electric needs. That’s very substantial for a single project,\u201d said Erin Smith, clean grid director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n The new transmission line to Massachusetts, called the New England Clean Energy Connect, will take a huge bite out of the state’s mandate to cut carbon emissions from the electric sector. But it can\u2019t do the whole job by itself. <\/p>\n \u201cIt’s a piece of the bigger clean energy portfolio,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n The rest of that portfolio, however, isn\u2019t developing as smoothly or as quickly as policymakers had hoped. In particular, offshore wind.<\/a> <\/p>\n Without more of that source of electricity, the new transmission lines are, for now, even more important to the region, said Marc Montalvo, head of the energy consultancy Daymark Energy Advisors.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were going to be two parts of a much bigger set of things, and now they look like they’re the things,\u201d Montalvo said.<\/p>\n The new CHPE line in New York, built by a subsidiary of the asset management company Blackstone, will allow the city government to claim progress towards a looming deadline: Cut or offset its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.<\/a><\/p>\n The CHPE converter site includes several transformers used to step down electricity to the voltage used on New York City’s grid.<\/p>\n Henry Epp\/Marketplace<\/p>\n \u201cThis project, CHPE, is going to be instrumental in helping us meet our 50% mandate ahead of schedule,\u201d said Sana Barakat, New York City\u2019s deputy commissioner for energy management.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/725cfc-20260511-a-man-with-a-high-visibility-vest-and-helmet-stands-in-front-of-an-industrial-buildi.jpeg\")
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