Clean Path NY: the second line the city was promised

I · What Tier 4 was built to do

Tier 4 is the slice of New York's Clean Energy Standard (the state rule that sets how much of the grid's power must come from renewable sources) aimed only at New York City, which grid operators label Zone J, the downstate load zone. The city sits at the end of long transmission paths and still leans on gas plants in neighborhoods like Astoria and Sunset Park, so the state set Tier 4 up to pull clean power straight into that zone rather than hope it trickles down from upstate.

In 2021 NYSERDA chose two projects to split that job. CHPE would import Canadian hydropower, and Clean Path NY would move renewable energy generated inside the state. Together, at last public report, the pair was expected to supply on the order of a third of the city's electricity once both ran. Pairing an import with homegrown generation was the whole point: two sources, two routes, so the city would not lean on a single line.

II · What the second line would have carried

Clean Path NY was a joint effort of the developers energyRe and Invenergy together with the New York Power Authority, the state's public power utility. The plan paired new upstate wind and solar farms with about 175 miles of buried high-voltage direct-current cable (HVDC, a long-distance format that loses less power over distance than the ordinary alternating-current lines on most poles) running from the Southern Tier down toward the city.

At last public report the line was sized at roughly 1,300 megawatts (a megawatt is about enough to power several hundred homes at a given moment), close to CHPE's roughly 1,250. That is enough, on paper, to cover a large slice of a winter evening's demand, though the real figure would swing with how often upstate wind and sun actually showed up. Unlike the steady hydropower import, Clean Path's output would have risen and fallen with the weather, which is both its appeal and its complication.

III · Why one line lived and the other didn't

CHPE had a head start that Clean Path never caught. Its route was largely settled, its single supplier across the border was already generating, and much of its construction was underway by the time costs across the industry began to climb. The runs from the Canadian line reach a converter station in Astoria, Queens, and the project has been targeting an in-service date around 2026 at last public report.

Clean Path still had to build generation and transmission at the same time, across private land and on a tighter schedule. When interest rates, equipment prices, and supply chains all moved the wrong way in 2023 and 2024, the math on the newer project stopped working, and the developers and NYPA ended the Tier 4 contract in 2024. The state has not, at last public report, replaced that specific award with an equivalent in-state line.

IV · What the city's supply math is now missing

With only CHPE delivering, the city gets a large, steady block of imported hydropower but loses the in-state renewable leg that Clean Path was meant to carry. That gap matters because the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the state's 2019 climate law, counts on new in-state wind and solar, not just imports, to meet its targets. An import alone does not build a wind farm in the Southern Tier.

It also matters for the gas peaker plants still running in the city (older units that fire up on the hottest and coldest days). Pushing those offline was part of what both lines were meant to do, and one line does less of that work than two. How much less depends on offshore wind timelines, on Local Law 97 building retrofits that cut demand in the first place, and on whether the state ever solicits a replacement route.

V · Worth watching this month

1. NYSERDA's Tier 4 and Clean Energy Standard pages are where any new solicitation to replace the in-state leg would first appear, and nothing of that scale is posted there at last public report.

2. CHPE's own project updates are worth a check for its in-service date, still expected around 2026, since a slip there would be the more consequential near-term change.

3. Con Edison and NYISO filings on Zone J capacity will show whether the city's reserve margin tightens as old gas plants retire, which is the routine but telling number here.

4. Public Service Commission postings in the Tier 4 proceeding may note how the state now accounts for the terminated contract, though such filings tend to be technical and slow.

5. State offshore wind announcements matter to this story too, since those projects now carry more of the downstate clean supply than first planned.