Connecticut's U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy are joining with several of their counterparts around New England to encourage Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to support a transmission line project that would bring hydropower from Canada into New England via underwater cable beneath Lake Champlain.

Blumenthal and Murphy joined with Vermont Sen. Peter Welch as well as Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts in a letter to Granholm to include funding for the New England Clean Power Link project in the federal Energy Department's $2.5 billion Transmission Facilities Program. The project is a 1,000-megawatt transmission line to bring Canadian hydropower into the six-state-region.

Part of the transmission line would be buried under Lake Champlain before coming ashore in Rutland County, Vermont. From there, the transmission line would be buried underground across about 56 miles of central Vermont before it would be linked with an existing portion of New England's electric transmission grid.

The $1.6 billion project is seen as a way to improve energy reliability in New England, particularly in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island where demand for electricity is the highest. The New England Clean Power Link project has already received all the permits needed, but a timeline for the construction of the project has not yet been established.

The developer of the New England Clean Power Link, Albany, N.Y.-based Transmission Developers Inc., has submitted its plan to the Energy Department in an effort to get federal funding for the project. In their letter to Granholm, the five senators said the project "would help address New England's annual winter grid reliability issues and help the region achieve its renewable energy goals."

"New England has long struggled with winter energy reliability," the letter from the five lawmakers said in part. "In December 2022, during Winter Storm Elliot, our region experienced a region-wide, unanticipated capacity deficiency when power generators were unable to fulfill their obligations. A consistent source of additional electricity flowing into New England would help stabilize the grid."