This article originally ran on Forbes.com on February 4, 2026. All rights reserved.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy is among a handful of Northeastern Governors and other politicians who have successfully stopped the siting or construction of new oil and gas pipelines in their states. Ten years ago, as Massachusetts’ then Attorney General, she released a study that it was unlikely Massachusetts would ever face grid reliability issues in the future, and that no new fossil fuel pipelines would, therefore, be needed in that State. Recently, however, now-Governor Healey has taken to denying that she ever sought to block pipelines from bringing fossil fuels into her State at all.
Meanwhile, the importance of allowing new pipelines for the lives of the people of Massachusetts became more acute last week, as temperatures in New England plunged to frigidly sustained low levels not seen in years. However, needing massive amounts of electricity for heat, New Englanders have been unpleasantly surprised to learn that hydropower from Hydro-Quebec, which was supposed to provide a substantial part of Massachusetts’s new green energy grid, had actually suspended delivery of new energy through the New England Clean Energy Connect, just a week after this new transmission line opened to much fanfare. In fact, The Governor’s Wind Energy Coalition announced that Hydro-Quebec had “halted the flow of power for all but one hour on Sunday, January 24, when the line briefly operated at half capacity.”
The failure to deliver necessary and planned for power at such a key time has reopened longstanding doubts about the reliability of the entire $1.6B project, at a time when the Healy Administration already is facing political heat over the pre-storm spike in overall energy prices in the Bay State. In fact, during the recent storm, New England had to restart old oil turbines just to provide sufficient power for its customers. In fact, these turbines produced almost 40% of the regions’ power during the recent storm, named Winter Storm Fern.
Meanwhile, the New England Clean Air Connect had previously signed twenty-year fixed price contracts with Massachusetts utilities. Thanks to the now-normal regulatory and litigation delays, that project took almost ten years to construct. It opened just a week before the very recent Winter Storm Fern devastated the region, but it was not able to deliver the promised power when it was actually needed the most.
The failure of New England Clean Energy Connect now also raises questions about the reliability of the planned $6B project to feed hydropower electricity from Hydro-Quebec to New York City at all. That system was supposed to be put into operation this year, in 2026. However, Quebec has been facing a prolonged drought, which has reduced the amount of water flowing through Quebec’s dams. This has reduced, in turn, the amount of hydropower that can currently be generated in Quebec, and it has actually led to an increase in energy imports to Canada of electricity from the United States, and not the other way around, as green energy planners would have hoped and wished for.
But the completion of Quebec’s dams comes amid a prolonged Canadian drought, which has reduced the amount of water coming through Quebec’s dams and has reversed traditional power flows across the border. As noted, New England has been exporting electricity to Quebec in recent months, while Hydro-Quebec cuts back on spot sales into the region in an attempt to rebuild its reservoir levels. The situation has led to questions about Hydro-Quebec’s ability to deliver on its contracts overall.
Meanwhile, Hydro-Quebec’s Chief Operating Officer, Serge Abergel, has recently admitted that Hydro-Quebec is planning to pay penalties for its failure to deliver contracted for power to New England. Given that anticipated failure, can New York count on Hydro-Quebec’s ability to meet its obligated deliveries? Abergel claimed that Hydro-Quebec is pursuing a plan to add 9,000 MW of new generating capacity by 2035.
Despite natural gas being readily available and very close to New York and New England –if it can be delivered by non-existent pipelines at all, of course – by blocking new pipelines altogether these states have managed to leave themselves with no good way to access this much needed resource. Meanwhile, both New York and New England must now hope that Hydro-Quebec manages to fix its problems quickly. However, the current arctic front shows no signs of abating. The power emergency that energy experts have long warned about is now here. New York and New England need to add to their available power to simply heat their homes. Meanwhile, their governing politicians are left only to hope that the reduced available power will still be sufficient for their citizens. If not, we can expect some pretty ugly scenes to occur in places like New York and New England, both in terms of keeping people energy secure, safe, and warm, and later, at the ballot box, when it is realized by voters that the energy security that consumers have long been promised by their governments cannot be guaranteed after all.
