Transmission line that will bring hydro power from Quebec to New York City heads into next half of construction
By Larry Rulison, Times Union
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Champlain Hudson Power Express is coming to a railroad bed or, in some cases, a backyard near you.
Not to be confused this time of year with “Polar Express,” the popular children’s book and movie, the Champlain Hudson Power Express is a 339-mile direct-current electric transmission line that is designed to bring renewable energy from Canadian power company Hydro-Quebec straight to New York City.
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And while “The Polar Express” reportedly grossed more than $300 million worldwide, the Champlain Hudson Power Express, or CHPE as it is also known, is costing its private equity owners $6 billion to build.
Construction of the line, made up of two cables just five inches in diameter each, started almost exactly two years ago in Whitehall, Washington County, during a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Quebec Premier François Legault and others.
Although New York City will be the most direct beneficiary of CHPE — the 1,250 megawatts of hydropower flowing from Quebec will provide enough electricity to power one million homes — the project will go a long way in helping New York reach the goals of its extremely ambitious climate change law, which requires the state to rid itself of all fossil-fuel power plant emissions by 2040.
Right now, work on CHPE is happening in communities all across the Capital Region, from Saratoga Springs to Rotterdam and through the town of Bethlehem on down toward Catskill.
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If you live or travel along the path of the project, you may have seen some of the ongoing CHPE construction as the cables are being buried along railroad beds as well as underwater in Lake Champlain and parts of the Hudson River.
About half of the entire project has been completed, a CHPE spokesperson said.
“Work is done in sections and in various areas will be ongoing through the fall of 2025,” the spokesperson added.
The land where the route travels is cleared and dug up, and after the cables are buried, construction may pause for a while until the lines from the various sections are dug up again and spliced together, so work may start and stop and start again depending on the schedule. All work is expected to be completed by the middle of 2026.
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Some of the route runs over commercial and residential property lines, which has required CHPE’s owners to negotiate hundreds of property line easement agreements with property owners. In some cases, the two sides ended up in court fighting over how much those easements are worth. Payments have ranged from several thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the property.
“The project has successfully negotiated all but two of the nearly 700 easements necessary for construction,” a CHPE spokesperson told the Times Union. “The final easements are expected to be completed within the next month.”
Although the number of permanent jobs directly tied to CHPE after its completion will be minimal, the multiyear construction project has created 1,400 construction jobs.
CHPE’s owners also negotiated property tax agreements with governments all along the route through local industrial development agencies. Although some groups have been critical of the lack of permanent jobs associated with the project — usually a requirement for IDA benefits — its owners have argued that it is generating local tax revenue on land that normally would not have been developed.
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The Albany County IDA negotiated a 30-year $163.7 million payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with CHPE owners, which is about a 22 percent discount to what a project of that type would have generated. But CHPE had to pay an administrative fee of $2.28 million that will be distributed to local IDAs like in Guilderland, which is also hosting a large section of the line that runs along its industrial park.
Groups that support the state’s renewable energy goals and reductions in carbon emissions are excited that such a large project is well underway and within sight of being completed.
Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, says when the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester County was taken offline in 2021, the demand for power in New York City was met by fossil fuel power plants, making the state’s ability to reach its climate goals even harder.
“The Champlain Hudson Power Express will enable us to bring down clean hydropower from Canada to fill the ever-increasing downstate power need,” Wells said. “This transmission project is an important step in decreasing our reliance on fossil fuel plants, and plays a significant part in our overall clean energy goals.”
Photo at top: A construction access point at the intersection of Denton and Bloomfield roads in Saratoga Springs along the rail lines where Champlain Hudson Power Express cables are being laid is one of many throughout the region. Lori Van Buren/Times Union
My late uncle worked for Hydro Quebec for 30 years, including scientific consulting on the generation and transmission of the James Bay project, which is supplying CHPE. He was appalled by the environmental destruction. From Wikipedia: “installed generating capacity of 15.244 GW, at the cost of 7,000 square miles of Cree hunting lands. The reservoirs also released methyl mercury rendering the fisheries toxic. “Clean Energy”???
7000 square miles of trashed environment is 75% of the area of the Adirondack Park.
Further Blackstone, the PE developer will reap huge returns at consumer expense. A good question is why NYPA is not developing pump storage hydro with NY State’s abundant water and elevation drops. Pump storage has a mych, much smaller footprint than wind or solar and is far more reliable. NYPA built such things 50-60 years ago. Why not now? China has an active program, while the US snoozes.
I suspect that part of the issue is that not only is there demand need, but that the current transmission lines are not adequate to handle the load. would hydro pump storage be a solution to that? I think it is still a problem of moving more electrons from generation point to consumption point. I think the solution to the issue with the grid and reducing the transmission load is multi-pronged. Distributed Generation can be a part of that solution and I am heartened to see some progress in that approach. I am thinking more of the individual rooftop or field mount solar rather than the large, utility scale installations (which I have no personal familiarity with). our home solar system, installed late 2023 has performed very well, and we remain connected to the grid. if costs for installation could continue to come down it could play a role in solving the issues – especially now that there is (what I will call) community net metering available. In a recent conversation with National Grid I was pleased to hear that I can donate excess power to any other National Grid customer.