Bob Harrison

If this continues through the summer and into the fall, then we start to see more downstream effects of higher oil and natural gas prices.

To get hydropower from Quebec to New York,

The developers of the new Champlain Hudson Power Express line designed special barges to drop cables to the bottom of Lake Champlain.

They drilled under the East River and they built a facility in Astoria, Queens, where the line ends its 300 plus mile journey.

Bob Harrison is the head engineer for this project, showing me an array of electrical equipment connected to the cables.

On one end, there's a metallic arm the length of a pickup truck sticking straight up.

Soon, that arm will lower, sending electricity onto the New York City grid, enough to power a million homes.

It all makes Harrison a little emotional.

He's worked on the project for 11 years.

When Harrison started 11 years ago, building the line made perfect sense given the region's energy market.

Hydro-Quebec, the government-owned utility north of the border, had lots of energy to spare.

Pierre-Olivier Pinault is a professor of energy sector management at the business school HEC Montreal.

So the government of Quebec pushed to sell more power to the northeastern U.S., where states were looking to get away from fossil fuels.

Eleven years later, now that the lines are finally installed, Quebec's surplus is not what it used to be.

The province has been in a drought for three years, so there's less water the utility can pass through its dams.

Meanwhile, there are new industries and data centers north of the border that want cheap hydropower.

And Pinot says Quebec has its own decarbonization goals.

So while Hydro-Québec is meeting all that demand, it also needs to fulfill its contracts to send power to the South for the next 20-plus years.

And New York and Massachusetts are counting on that.

Aaron Smith is Clean Grid Director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts.