Climate and Environment

The nature of New Jersey’s energy supply and demand poses serious challenges to the effort to reduce harmful emissions.

New Jersey’s electricity portfolio, when last reported in 2015, included 49.5% that was generated through the use of natural gas.

Nuclear plants provided 44.5%, and only 2% came from coal. Coal usage, which has been declining sharply since 2006, now is close to zero: in June 2017, Public Service Electric & Gas closed the state’s two largest and oldest remaining coal-fired power plants, leaving two smaller plants.

Despite that, overall emissions from energy generation declined by only 8% from 2006 to 2015.¹⁰ Heavy reliance on the burning of natural gas was the reason the drop was not greater. Gas-fired generation in New Jersey increased dramatically—by 51% from 2013 to 2016 (surpassing nuclear power)—and that brought a significant increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) from combustion.¹¹ When methane emissions from natural gas are taken into account, the situation became even more serious, given that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 in the short run.

The trend away from nuclear power is likely to accelerate when the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, responsible for about 4% of in-state generation, closes in 2019.

PSEG has raised concerns about the financial viability of its nuclear plants in New Jersey. For New Jersey, then, emissions reductions from electricity production is a matter of reducing natural-gas generation while substantially improving efficiency and increasing renewable energy production.

On the demand side, New Jerseyans’ energy consumption is lower than the national average. The state ranks 37th in per-capita energy consumption.¹³

LIMITING CARBON EMISSIONS

New Jersey was once among the leading states in a cooperative effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which included the “California Car” program, the 2007 state Global Warming Response Act, the 2008 state Energy Master Plan, and a regional cap-and-trade¹⁴ agreement. The state was among seven that in 2005 established the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,¹⁵ the nation’s first mandatory cap and trade program. States participating in RGGI commit to capping their carbon emissions and requiring power plants to purchase allowances in order to emit specific amounts of carbon. Three more states joined in 2007. Then New Jersey dropped out in 2011.

PROMOTING CLEAN ENERGY

The safest, most efficient energy future for New Jersey is clean, renewable energy such as wind and solar, combined with reduced energy waste. The state Senate has twice voted overwhelmingly to enact the Renewable Energy Transition Act. RETA would require that 80% of all electricity sold in the state “shall be from Class I renewable energy sources” by 2050. Class I sources include solar photovoltaic, wind, and methane gas from landfills.

RETA sets up a schedule of increases, starting with 20% renewables by 2020 and increasing the target by 10% every five years, reaching the full 80% level by 2050. The amount of electricity sold in the state from renewable sources—nearly zero just 10 years ago—is currently less than 10%.

Enactment of RETA would make New Jersey one of the leading states in the use of renewables. The California Senate has adopted legislation to speed its transition to 50% renewable energy by 2026 and to move to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Hawaii enacted a 100% renewable energy mandate by 2045. New York is committed to achieve 50% renewable energy by 2030.

LONG-TERM ENERGY PLANNING TO MEET EMISSION TARGETS

Chief among existing New Jersey state laws addressing climate change is the Global Warming Response Act (GWRA), passed in 2007. It calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and sets a target of further reducing emissions to 80% below 2006 levels by 2050. The state is not on track, nor does it have a plan, to meet the 2050 goals. In fact, as already noted, emissions reductions in the electricity generation sector have slowed due to the significant increase in gas-fired electric generation.

The law would be even more effective if it set specific targets for increased renewables such as wind and solar and for reduced energy use.

MAKE ENERGY EFFICIENCY A WAY OF LIFE

Climate change and other 21st-century considerations require giving more attention to how the places where New Jerseyans live and work are built and operated.

MAKE STATE GOVERNMENT A STRONGER PARTNER

Energy efficiency is important enough to be promoted more actively at the state level.

DEALING WITH VEHICLE POLLUTION

Greenhouse gases also originate from mobile sources, primarily motor vehicles. At least until the new administration took over, the U.S. Department of Transportation had steadily toughened Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to meet more stringent greenhouse gas emissions standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. New Jersey, in turn, adopted the California Car program,¹⁷ requiring passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks sold after Jan. 1, 2009, to meet the EPA’s strictest vehicle emissions standards, and creating incentives for Zero Emission Vehicles.

Regardless of where federal policy goes next, the improved fuel efficiency of cars and the increasing number of low- and zero-emission vehicles on New Jersey’s roads show the effectiveness of the CAFE standards and the California Car program. Their salutary effect, however, is at least partially offset by steady growth in miles traveled by New Jersey motorists: 75.4 million miles in 2015, compared with 72.8 million in 2009.¹⁸

HARNESSING WIND FOR POWER

The Offshore Wind Economic Development Act, adopted in 2010, authorized the state Economic Development Authority to provide tax credits for qualified facilities in wind energy zones. There has been no effort to implement this law, however— costing New Jersey jobs, renewable energy, and investments that offshore wind projects generate in other states. New Jersey has significant potential generation capacity, and with greater support from policymakers the state is positioned to be a national leader on offshore wind projects.²⁰

PROMOTE CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT OF SOLAR POWER

New Jersey has been a nationally recognized leader in solar power development, ranking first on the East Coast and among the top three states nationwide in installed solar capacity. In 2015, solar power became the state’s largest source of renewable electricity.

New Jersey should promote additional growth in solar by considering policies that other states have recently implemented to foster the solar market. For example, New York implemented a public/private partnership, called NY-Sun, that coordinates and expands existing solar programs, including that of PSEG Long Island, to support solar expansion. The cost of utility grid solar has significantly decreased in New York. Delaware and Connecticut now use a bidding system for inclusion in long-term contracts, with some solar companies bidding zero charges for the first three or four years to gain the security of the longer term.

USE CLEAN ENERGY FUND AS INTENDED

New Jersey slowed its move to clean energy by diverting more than $1.3 billion that utility customers had paid into programs designed to reduce energy use and promote development of renewable energy sources. These diversions for other purposes continued under the state budget adopted for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2017.

PIPELINE PROLIFERATION

New Jersey’s increased reliance on natural gas for electricity has serious drawbacks. Though natural gas burns more cleanly than oil or coal, it is a non-renewable fossil fuel, with high levels of carbon dioxide, and it brings a dramatic increase in emissions of methane—a powerful greenhouse gas that absorbs 25 times as much heat as CO₂ does. In addition to the climate impact, there are direct local effects: some power plants fueled by natural gas, including the Newark Energy Center, are in economically distressed neighborhoods and communities of color, where they contribute to air pollution that already is at disproportionately high levels.

A growing share of the natural gas reaching New Jersey comes from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Pennsylvania. To carry this product from source to end users elsewhere in the U.S. and overseas, new pipelines have been proposed for New Jersey. Already, 1,520 miles of pipelines crisscross the state. Serious questions have been raised about the dangers these pipelines pose to public health and ecologically sensitive lands and habitat—explosions, as well as accidents, leaks, and spills—as well as about whether more pipelines are being proposed than needed to meet demand.

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“Buy land,” Will Rogers famously counseled nearly a century ago. “They ain’t making any more of the stuff.” If the vaudevillian-turned-social commentator were alive today, he might advise New Jerseyans: “Preserve land. There ain’t much more of the stuff left.”

New Jersey is the most densely populated state and the most built-out. More than 2 million of the state’s 5 million acres are fully developed, and an estimated 1.4 million acres are protected by various levels of government. With much of the remaining land unsuitable for development, researchers expect New Jersey to approach near-total build-out by midcentury.²¹

Preserving and protecting New Jersey’s shoreline, its diminishing open fields, forests, wetlands, highlands, farmland, and parkland are more than a matter of aesthetics. Undeveloped land absorbs rainfall, replenishing aquifers that are major sources of drinking water. The impervious surfaces in fully developed areas prevent rainwater from being absorbed by the ground, causing urban flooding, stormwater runoff, and sewer overflows.

SHORE PLAN LONG OVERDUE

Some municipalities along the Atlantic coast, Delaware Bay, and other low-lying areas are taking steps on their own. These include planning to buy out residents whose homes are severely damaged or destroyed in future storms; amending master plans to return storm-devastated residential areas to open space; requiring foundations of rebuilt homes to be raised several feet above previous levels; and upgrading sewer systems to protect against water contamination from severe flooding. But this is too big a problem to leave to local action.

STRENGTHENING STATE PLANNING

New Jersey’s development patterns through the last three decades of the 20th century and into the second decade of the 21st have led to suburban sprawl, turning farmland into shopping malls, office parks, and residential developments. This, in turn, has brought more parking lots, streets and sidewalks, and bigger, wider highways that enable commuters to travel greater distances between home and work, increasing motor-vehicle use, gasoline consumption, toxic air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.

New Jersey’s first major attempt at curbing sprawl statewide came in 1985, with passage of the State Planning Act. The Act established the State Planning Commission (SPC) and the Office of State Planning (OSP). The SPC was assigned the duty of creating a “coordinated, integrated and comprehensive plan for the growth, development, and conservation of the State and its regions…which…identif[ies] areas for growth, agriculture, open space conservation and other appropriate designations.”²³

The commission adopted New Jersey’s first State Development and Redevelopment Plan in 1992, made changes and readopted in 2001, and offered a revision in 2010 that was not adopted. While many municipalities and counties actively participated in a “cross-acceptance” process aimed at linking the goals and objectives of the SDRP with local planning efforts, the effort was doomed by a flaw: the state plan was not binding. It became a haphazardly applied blueprint.

State and regional efforts, critical to climate change adaptation, demand greater urgency.

STRENGTHENING REGIONAL PLANNING BODIES

New Jersey’s efforts at regional planning have been more successful. In 1969, the Legislature established the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (“Development” was later dropped from its name). The HMDC statute set up a district comprising 14 municipalities in Bergen and Hudson counties, with the commission largely responsible for converting the Meadowlands from landfill-infested marshland in the basin of the polluted Hackensack River into a transportation and recreation hub boasting 8,400 acres of preserved wetlands and open space.

The commission accomplished this through an innovative tax-sharing plan, under which the municipalities pooled revenue and enjoyed the economic benefits of sharing services and consolidating their planning, zoning, and regulatory functions into a single entity. Despite recent legislation and administrative action that weakened this regional collaboration, the transformation of the Meadowlands has been impressive.

The Pinelands offers another regional planning success. In 1978, Congress created the Pinelands National Reserve, covering 1.1 million acres—or 22% of the state’s total land mass, the largest area of open space between Richmond and Boston. One year later, the New Jersey Legislature passed the Pinelands Protection Act, “to preserve, protect, and enhance the natural and cultural resources of the Pinelands National Reserve, and to encourage compatible economic and other human activities consistent with that purpose.”

The responsibility for carrying out this ambitious goal was placed in a 15-member appointed Pinelands Commission with an unusual level of land-use authority over an area encompassing 53 municipalities in Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, and Ocean counties. Among other powers, the commission can override local land-use and development regulations. Municipalities are required to conform their local master plans and zoning ordinances to the regional plan.

Pursuant to the statute, the commission in 1980 delineated areas where development would be permitted, limited, or prohibited. By law, this Comprehensive Management Plan is updated every five years.

Despite occasional disputes between the Pinelands Commission and its constituent municipalities and counties (as well as the Legislature and the governor), the vision set forward more than three decades ago largely prevails. Nearly half of the Pinelands (460,000 acres) is permanently protected through cooperative state, county, municipal, and private efforts. The New Jersey Pinelands Commission’s annual Long-Term Economic Monitoring Program finds that managed development has overall shown economic benefits for Pinelands municipalities using indicators such as population growth, real estate values, income and employment trends, and municipal finances.²⁵

The New Jersey Highlands Council, established in 2004, lacks the Pinelands Commission’s level of authority. Its jurisdiction covers 859,000 acres spread across 88 municipalities in Bergen, Hunterdon, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, and Warren counties.

Like the Pinelands Act, the Highlands Act aims to protect important water supplies—in this case, the sources for 5.4 million New Jersey residents, or 60% of the state’s population. Unlike the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan, however, the Highlands Regional Plan is more an advisory document than an enforceable plan of action. It more closely resembles the State Planning Act in this regard, carrying sufficient weight to persuade some municipalities and counties to participate in joint planning efforts but lacking enforcement clout except in a Preservation Area regulated by the DEP. And, like the State Planning Commission, the Highlands Council’s influence depends largely on the attention—or inattention—it receives from the administration in Trenton.

In recent years, some decisions have been made that run counter to the mission of preserving valuable resources and promoting regional solutions. Examples include eliminating regional tax sharing in the Meadowlands and approving a gas pipeline through the Pinelands’ fragile ecosystem. In addition, the DEP has made more land in the Highlands available for development by increasing the number of septic systems allowed there. Corrections are needed to get back on course.

BEACH REPLENISHMENT

The Army Corps of Engineers, which has spent an estimated $1.5 billion on New Jersey beach projects over the past 25 years, proposes to spend an additional $1.92 billion for sand dredging and pumping through 2060, to replenish beaches and reconstruct dunes, which will be in ever-greater danger of washing away in extreme weather.²⁶ This is a losing proposition.

Even the best efforts of coastal municipalities to adapt their master plans, zoning ordinances, and building codes to changing climate conditions are no substitute for a larger scope of regional planning and management strategies.

Time is not on New Jersey’s side. Challenges that previously were little known now turn out to be substantial threats to residents’ well-being. And, in many instances, the situation is worsened because of action deferred and protections weakened. From rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to developing a shore master plan to protecting economically struggling communities, restoring New Jersey to national environmental leadership is about far more than bragging rights. The state’s quality of life is on the line.