Real, regional, and lasting.

The cable is a regional growth engine. Independent analysis commissioned by the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) and performed by the Idaho National Laboratory projected a 30-year regional economic impact between $87.7 billion and $134.9 billion, supported by roughly 177,000 person-years of employment.

• Direct construction employment in marine cable installation, converter station construction, and interconnection work
• Sustained operations, maintenance, and engineering employment over the cable's multi-decade asset life
• Indirect economic activity across regional supply chains, ports, and professional services
• Reduced wholesale electricity costs through market efficiency gains on both sides of the border

Buried HVDC has one of the lowest environmental footprints of any large-capacity transmission option. The cable enables the displacement of higher-emitting generation with clean imports, while the route itself is engineered to protect sensitive shoreline and marine ecosystems — the cable is buried beneath the seabed offshore and underground on land, with no exposed run between the two.

• Continuous displacement of fossil generation through cross-border clean-energy exchange
• No overhead lines or new transmission corridors across forests, mountains, or developed land
• Buried ~1–1.5 m beneath the seabed across the Strait — no surface footprint, and no electromagnetic field at the surface of the water
• Horizontally drilled shore approaches emerge roughly 800 m offshore, so the cable never crosses the intertidal zone, eelgrass beds, or shoreline habitat
• Marine-mammal observers and a 500 m exclusion zone govern cable-lay operations under the Fisheries and Oceans Canada–approved mitigation plan

Cross-border interconnection is among the most cost-effective forms of reliability the grid can buy. The cable adds a fully controllable corridor between two large, independent systems, with the technology characteristics needed to support voltage, frequency, and rapid contingency response.

• Independent backup capacity for both BPA and BC Hydro during weather events and contingencies
• Black-start capability — voltage-source converters can re-energize a network from a dark grid
• Real and reactive power control supports voltage stability across the interconnection
• Bi-directional dispatch in seconds — no scheduling lead time required to redirect flows