The United States Army Corps of Engineers has issued the federal environmental permit for Hydro-Québec’s New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) power transmission line project, which is aimed at delivering up to 1,200 MW of electricity generated at Hydro-Québec's hydropower plants in Canada to the New England energy grid in Maine. The Army Corps permit clears the way for the launch of construction work in Maine.
The US$1bn project is developed in collaboration with Central Maine Power, an affiliate of Avangrid. It has secured three major state permits in Maine (including the approval of the Public Utilities Commission in April 2019, the Land Use and Planning Commission in January 2020, and the Department of Environmental Protection in May 2020) and it still expects approvals from ISO New England and the US Department of Energy. In addition, the project needs to secure multiple municipal approvals. Hydro-Québec hopes to obtain all the required permits for the transmission line to be built in Québec by the end of 2020 and to begin construction in the spring of 2021. It could be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 2022.