Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Start of Construction on Converter Station for 339-mile Champlain Hudson Power Express

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul, alongside United States Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk, Premier of Quebec Francois Legault, Grand Chief Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, and executive leadership from Transmission Developers and Hydro-Québec, announced the start of construction on the converter station for the 339-Mile Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line – paving the way for the first-ever transformation of a fossil fuel site into a grid-scale zero-emission facility in New York City. Once completed, the state-of-the-art facility will convert 1,250 megawatts of clean energy from direct current to alternating current power that will be fed directly into the City’s power grid. Today’s announcement accelerates progress toward New York’s target of 70 percent of the State’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030 as required by the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Thank you for providing the baseball hat. It's a windy day. I know, Tim, that really didn't affect you too much, but I'm going to put this on, so my hair doesn't blow all over, all right? You know, being the first female Governor, I look at all the guys. First of all, I'm just going to deviate here. You guys have changed ties a couple times a day, maybe. I'm going to completely be dressed entirely differently in one hour from now. So, I'll be changing the back of the car, putting on my baseball hat. All right, enough complaining.

This is a day to celebrate. And I could not be happier to be right here, right now. And I was taking note of the fact that this says CHPE. I mean, what is CHPE? I remember the fact that I was brand new Lieutenant Governor, and one of our big, burly labor guys up in Buffalo who came up to me, he was asked about, what do you know about this new Lieutenant Governor, Hochul? He said, “She's really chippy.” And I'm like, and I saw that in print, and I called and said, “What the hell does that mean?” Is that a good thing or a bad thing? What is chippy? He says, it's like a hockey term. It means you're like really tough and scrappy. I said, “I'll take that. I'll take that. That's fine.” And this is a tough and scrappy project because it went through a long process to get here.

So, I am delighted to be here as part of this. And what I want to acknowledge there are some incredible people that have brought us to this place. We have leaders like our Premier. I want to thank him, and thank him for believing in this project in a way that I don't think many other people believed in. He knew that this was so important for both our economies, both our economies, and you can marry economic growth with transition to clean energy if you do it in a smart way, where government and business work together. So, François Legault, I want to thank you also for the invitation to come to Quebec. I will come, I will come and see this, where the power is actually generated, make sure it's coming my way. And so, I look forward to accepting that as well.

Also, I want to thank Grand Chief Sky-Deer, who blessed us when we were at the commencement of this project up in Whitehall a few months ago, and I want to thank you as the Head of the Mohawk Council for all you do for us as well. I don't know if David Turk has arrived, our Deputy Secretary for the Department of Energy. David, if you are here, we welcome – I think all of Washington is in New York City this week. Thank you for giving us a little bit of a traffic jam. We do have a great subway system, by the way. You don't have to suffer. I'll be on the subway probably later this afternoon.

To also our Borough President, Donovan Richards, a great friend, a great champion. And when you hear the planes, you know that he has his hands in these airports here in Queens, making sure that those jobs go to the local communities for our continued expansion. So, thank you there as well.

I also want to recognize Doreen Harris, the CEO and President of NYSERDA. Doreen, extraordinary, extraordinary work that you've accomplished thus far. Let's give her a round of applause. She is the one who makes the magic happen. Basil Seggos, my Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation. The All-Star team, as well as other members of my team as well.

I know we have Serge Abergel here, the CEO of Hydro Quebec. I want to thank you for your investments here, and I hope I didn't forget anybody. Brian Kubeck, the Chairman of the Board of TDI and Champlain Hudson has joined us as well, and our friends from Blackstone and others.

Now listen, I've got this whole wonderful speech. My team works really hard on these. Unfortunately for them, I don't like to read speeches, so I'm just going to talk to you. I'm going to tell you what this means to me. This means that we are on the cusp of a transformation. That is one now, not of thinking about the future and planning how we need to transition, but it's saying that the future has arrived. And when we talk about the reason, we needed to have this transition to renewable energy, it is because of the ongoing assault of mankind against Mother Earth. We are now living the effects of what has happened over decades, where people not caring about what poison is being emitted into our waters, our streams, our air, and not caring about what is happening with all the discharges of carbon into our atmosphere.

But today, we're no longer sounding the alarm. The alarm went off decades ago, but now people are finally paying attention. Well, we just came through 2023. It's going to go down in history books for having such extreme weather right here in our own state. And look at what's happening around the world. I'm concerned because we're only at day 259 of this year, where we've had record snowfall nine months ago paralyzing a city. Loss of life was record-setting in Buffalo. Then we have the 100-year events for flooding, which we think, “Oh my gosh, how can you have so many 100-year events?” Only to be topped by a 1,000-year flooding event. And I ask a lot of questions. How do you know it's a 1,000-year event? Who was keeping track 1,000 years ago? And they said, “Take it from us, it's really bad.”

Okay, so we have had extreme flooding. We also know why this event was delayed. Because of the fires in Quebec triggered by climate change, out of control, created an air quality crisis right here in New York City where we and Syracuse on the same day were tied for having the worst air quality on the planet. And then we had more flooding, we had more fires, we've had more devastation. Two hurricanes my first week as Governor just a couple weeks ago. So, need I say more? The crisis is upon us. And shame on us if we are not going to take smart opportunities like Hydro-Quebec. Being an opportunity for us to transition from the fossil fuels.

And I thank Tim Cawley for his leadership of what they are doing at Con Ed to help make this smoother and easier for our rate payers as well, critically important.

So, it's long overdue in my opinion. Hydroelectric power has long been there. It has powered Western New York where I'm from and I'm used to seeing those transmission lines from the Niagara Falls power generation plant, all over. The beauty of this project is you won't even know it's there. This is all underground. It's not going to go through our beautiful mountains and our beautiful rivers and streams and wonderful, wonderful beauty of Upstate New York. People won't even know it's there and yet it's going to be able to take thousands of homes and power them with clean energy. One million homes in New York City will be powered by this facility. I am so excited. That is record-setting.

And to get this done in just one year after we signed an agreement, how often does that happen in government? A 6,330,000-mile transmission line coming right here to this very place. And so that's the future. The future has arrived. We're focused on this transition to renewable energy, but also, it's also about creating justice for communities that have had to endure the effects of asthma in children and in families.

We talk about Asthma Alley, that's not in some third world country, that's right here in Queens. And this is an important step, a commitment by all of us to do what's right for the people of today as well. So, I'll leave you with this, we are called upon to plan the future, to make it a better experience, better existence for our children and grandchildren. And shame on us if we don't act with urgency in this moment because future generations will not look kindly upon us if we do not. All of us have to go back and figure out what is our role? What is our opportunity? How do we seize this? And so, future generations will be kinder and say they understood.

And I am hopeful because in my lifetime I have seen change. This is from a person who has a little girl who used to swim in Lake Erie. Literally at the same time, there are 20,000 people working at the Bethlehem Steel Plant, and at night, you can see this molten lava substance. They're discharging this pollution before our very eyes into the water we are swimming in. And I thought the air that we all saw here in June, that orange cloud, I thought that was the normal. When I was growing up there, we didn't have blue skies. The skies were orange. And yet today, that water, that air is pristine. I am hopeful. I swam in that lake literally two weeks ago, a little crazy. I like to swim in cold water. And the air is so beautiful. That's what we can do when mankind stops the assault on Mother Nature and says, “Men and women must be joined together to protect this planet we've been entrusted with because it's all we've got.” It's all we've got. We can do this.

And today is a beautiful start. And I could not be prouder to be Governor at this moment in time when the future has arrived. Thank you very much, and I appreciate everyone joining us and all of you who have made this magic happen.