Clean energy giant Avangrid cleared the final regulatory hurdle on Wednesday to complete its long-awaited New England Clean Energy Connect, a 145-mile transmission line to bring hydroelectricity from Quebec to Maine, by the end of this year.
With the clean energy industry facing one setback after another in 2025, from the cancellation of offshore wind permits to the clawback of billions of dollars in funds for its programs, the completion of the Avangrid project will mark a rare win — even if it is a few years late.
Once operational, the line will deliver some 1,200 megawatts of hydropower to Massachusetts via the New England grid, enough to power more than one million homes, while helping stabilize energy prices in the region.
Controversies and opposition have delayed completing the transmission line, originally scheduled to go online in 2022, multiple times.
But with the final permit in hand, Avangrid said it’s finally good to go.
“We have secured every permit, met every regulatory requirement, and overcome significant challenges because we believe we must address the urgent need for reliable energy at a time of rising demand,” Avangrid chief executive Jose Antonio Miranda said in a statement.
Governor Maura Healey celebrated the win, calling the line “a key part of our all-of-the-above” energy strategy.
“This transmission line will deliver affordable, stable power from our partners in Canada to our residents and businesses,” she said in a statement to the Globe. “More energy means lower costs.”
The savings for Massachusetts ratepayers are projected to be minimal — $1.52 a month on average for Eversource and National Grid customers, a hair more for Unitil customers. But at a time when affordability and energy prices are top of mind for many consumers, any savings will be welcome. And unlike natural gas, which is subject to volatile price changes in the market, the 20-year contract for hydropower guarantees a steady rate.
The energy from the transmission line is a critical part of how Massachusetts has been planning to reach its mandate of essentially zeroing out planet-warming emissions by mid-century. But even without that requirement, renewable energy “is the fastest, cheapest, most reliable energy source we have,” said Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy at the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
“It’s just so much better for the economy and the environment than looking to fossil fuel resources that will take even longer to build,” she said.
The road to this point has been paved with drama — lawsuits and counter lawsuits, a vote by 59 percent of Mainers to cancel the whole thing, and the pairing of strange bedfellows, as some conservation groups found themselves on the same side as fossil fuel companies.
Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, said the entire ordeal is a testament to perseverance.
“Kudos to the developers’ lawyers for fending off the steady flow of legal challenges to the project filed at two state utility commissions, FERC, Maine permitting agencies, and state and federal courts,” he said, noting that even that list could be missing a venue or two.
The main controversy dealt with a stretch of new transmission line that needed to be built through untouched Maine woods — a wild area where whitewater rafting lures tourists and locals alike, and vast expanses of forest are home to wildlife. Mainers, who vote strongly for conservation issues, were opposed to clearing land to bring power lines through the area.
A powerful voice for environmental concerns in the state, the nonprofit Natural Resources Council of Maine, helped galvanize a broad, and uncommon, coalition of opposition. The group included environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, as well as companies such as NextEra Energy, Calpine Corp., and Vistra, all of which have substantial natural gas interests and donated heavily to the campaign to defeat the project.
The opposition pointed to complaints from Indigenous groups in Canada and New England about Hydro-Quebec’s practices and questioned whether the project would even cut greenhouse gas emissions as it claimed, or simply divert hydroelectric energy away from Canadian customers, forcing them to revert to fossil fuels.
“I think this saga shows that it’s actually possible to build big transmission lines, but it takes persistence,” Peskoe said. If the process were simpler, it might bring more competition to transmission development, which would drive down prices, he added.
“As New England states decarbonize, states can learn from this saga and adapt their permitting processes accordingly,” Peskoe said.
Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com.