When New Yorkers grab their morning coffee, it’s their electric grid that really needs the kick. Dozens of power plants shift into gear as demand for electricity soars at breakfast time and keeps rising until the city is done with dinner. A huge chunk of that energy is still being generated by planet-heating natural gas, and although the wider state of New York is trying to rapidly green its grid to slow climate change, there’s not always enough wind or sun to rely on in real time.
The hope is that the project will have positive global security outcomes: Interconnectors will force nations to think carefully about who their allies should be in a fast-changing geopolitical world, and to think twice before getting into diplomatic rows, or worse, military conflict. That’s already been happening in a sense, with fossil fuels. The Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was abandoned in 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was later sabotaged at sea.