Massachusetts spent a decade building a hydropower lifeline from Canada until it went dark for two weeks and left the region burning natural gas through its hottest summer days
Boston temperatures were climbing toward 90°F, air conditioners were running across the region, and electricity demand was rising — exactly the conditions a decade-long, $1 billion-plus transmission project from Canada was built to handle. Instead, the New England Clean Energy Connect had gone silent.
For two weeks, the 145-mile line delivered no power into New England. No formal announcement came from Hydro-Québec, the government-owned utility behind it. Just absence — at the moment Massachusetts needed the line most.
A new transmission line that wasn’t transmitting
ISO New England data confirm that NECEC delivered zero power between May 26 and June 8 — a full two weeks of silence from a line meant to transform the region’s energy mix. Hydro-Québec offered no proactive public statement. Only after reporters from CommonWealth Beacon reached out did the utility’s spokesperson, Lynn St-Laurent, acknowledge the line had been “offline due to technical issues” and that “repairs are currently underway.”
The Department of Energy Resources confirmed awareness of “a technical issue on the NECEC line” but declined to say whether penalties are being pursued.
“With any new transmission infrastructure, a period of optimization and fine-tuning is to be expected,” St-Laurent said. That explanation may be technically accurate. It doesn’t make the timing any less uncomfortable.
This wasn’t the first stumble. Shortly after the Healey administration celebrated NECEC’s completion in January, the line went dark for about a week. That earlier outage drew sharp public warnings from the state. This one — longer, warmer, quieter — got a statement saying officials were “aware of a technical issue, according to Commonwealth Beacon.
The stakes are real. NECEC is forecast to supply roughly 20 percent of Massachusetts’s electricity consumption. That’s not a supplemental resource. That’s a cornerstone.
Why this outage hits harder than the last one
New England’s electricity demand peaks in summer, driven by air conditioning. Québec’s peaks in winter, driven by electric heating. That mismatch matters enormously: summer is precisely when Massachusetts needs Canadian power most, and precisely when Québec has the least domestic pressure to keep it flowing.
The January outage, while disruptive, carried at least a partial rationale. Hydro-Québec could reasonably prioritize its own residents during a cold snap on a brand-new line — Joseph LaRusso, senior advocate at the Acadia Center, acknowledged as much at the time. The summer pause offers no equivalent justification.
The consequences of the January gap were already alarming. The region burned oil for 40 percent of its power during peak periods, and greenhouse gas emissions spiked sharply. This time, with NECEC offline during warmer weather, natural gas has filled the void. One Monday afternoon in early June — a comfortable, sunny day in Boston — 60 percent of regional power came from gas, up from roughly 55 percent the same period last year.
Grid reliability has held. But emissions goals are quietly taking a hit.
Drought north of the border is reshaping the hydropower math
Even when NECEC is technically operational, the power flowing through it may be less than originally envisioned. Québec is experiencing a record drought that has reduced water reserves and forced Hydro-Québec to recalibrate how much electricity it can export. Hydropower plans across Canada have had to be scaled back as conditions persist.
The numbers tell a sobering story. According to Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, net imports from Hydro-Québec through the first half of this year are roughly on par with the same period last year — before NECEC was even operational. “Fundamentally, we don’t see in the market any meaningful increase in energy supply from NECEC,” Dolan said.
Imports through an older transmission corridor had already declined significantly between 2022 and 2024. As of this past Monday, Québec municipalities and environmentalists were calling on provincial officials to consider stricter water regulations as drought conditions show no sign of easing. The hydropower math that justified a decade of political battles and more than a billion dollars in investment is looking shakier than planners anticipated.
Vineyard Wind adds another layer of uncertainty
Massachusetts’s offshore wind flagship is also underdelivering. Vineyard Wind is currently producing power at less than half its expected capacity, caught in ongoing litigation with turbine supplier GE Vernova, with all 62 Atlantic turbines not yet contributing at full output.
Unlike NECEC’s drought-driven variability, Vineyard Wind’s shortfall has a different character. LaRusso describes it as a political and legal dispute that will “eventually likely work itself out.” The long-term outlook, he argues, remains viable. There’s also a seasonal factor: offshore wind tends to generate more power in winter months, so Vineyard Wind’s current underperformance is less critical than it would be during a cold snap when oil and gas prices spike. “We need to take the long view,” LaRusso said.
That long view may be correct. But it doesn’t generate electricity today.
Penalties, contracts, and unanswered questions
In January, the Healey administration was direct: Hydro-Québec would face “steep penalties for each day they are not providing power to Massachusetts,” and those penalties would be returned to ratepayers. The message was firm and public. This time, the state’s posture is notably quieter. The Department of Energy Resources confirmed awareness of “a technical issue on the NECEC line” but declined to say whether penalties are being pursued.
Hydro-Québec’s spokesperson explained that contract provisions “are designed to reflect a range of possible circumstances when deliveries are suspended” — meaning deliveries can sometimes be rescheduled, sometimes trigger “compensation mechanisms,” and sometimes “non-delivery may be permitted.” Which scenario applies here? That, St-Laurent said, is being handled through “confidential discussions between the parties.”
Dolan put it plainly: “They are abiding by the flexibility and the open-ended elements of this contract. The challenge here is more of a political one, where the political expectation is one of reliability and energy security, and that’s not what this is.”
Big bets, big questions: rethinking New England’s clean energy strategy
Massachusetts’s energy policy over the past decade has rested on a clear premise: make large, state-mandated long-term contracts with a small number of major projects, and the clean energy will follow. NECEC and Vineyard Wind are the two most prominent expressions of that bet. Both are now underperforming simultaneously — during summer heat, rising demand, and a political environment already skeptical of clean energy ambition.
Grid reliability has been maintained so far. ISO New England says it isn’t expecting supply issues in the near future. But the emissions reductions that justified these projects are being quietly eroded every day natural gas fills the gap.
The pressure will only intensify. Rising electricity demand from AI data centers, electric vehicles, and building electrification means the region needs more dependable clean supply, not less. “There has to be a pretty sober assessment on whether these policies work,” Dolan said.
That assessment is worth sitting with. Massachusetts made enormous political and financial commitments on the assumption that big projects would deliver big, reliable results. What’s emerging instead is a more complicated picture — one where drought, litigation, technical faults, and contractual ambiguity can quietly unravel years of planning, right when temperatures are climbing and the grid needs every megawatt it can get.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
