From The Jersey Sierran, July - September 2022
By Sylvia Kay, Zero Waste Coordinator
In April 2022, Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club, testified before the NJ Senate Environment and Energy Committee and provided proactive goals intended to reverse New Jersey’s costly failure to meet climate reform targets. Ramos-Busot noted that New Jersey has failed to meet climate reforms established in the Energy Master Plan and that the cost of skyrocketing climate catastrophes burdens ratepayers. She stressed the need to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure and to replace this with an increased investment in renewables.
The price of doing nothing is huge and burdens NJ taxpayers with disaster cleanup. Ramos-Busot also noted that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently reported the overall cost to New Jersey for last year’s weather and climate-related disaster events was $10 billion, including $5 billion in property damage.
The NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Empower NJ coalition, of which the Chapter is a member, strongly urge a series of actions to meet Executive Order 274’s emissions reduction goal by 2030:
1. Terminate the seven fossil fuel projects proposed for the state.
2. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Department of Community Affairs, Board of Public Utilities, NJ Transportation Authority, and Department of Transportation must complete climate road maps.
3. Renewable natural gas (RNG) is a misnomer. Replace it with truly green energy sources.
4. Support cost-effective building electrification.
5. Support the DEP with increased staff and funding—the DEP has experienced a 40 percent cut in funds and a 30 percent cut in staff in recent years.
6. Empower and incentivize markets to enable a green energy transition. Restoration of the $83 million taken from the NJ Clean Energy Fund is also desirable.
7. Most important, the legislature must act quickly and wisely to avert future costly climate crises. Proactive actions and regulations are a more economical strategy than pricey reactive cleanups.
New Jersey needs to quickly ramp up genuinely clean, renewable energy sources because there is no acceptable transition role for fossil fuels as the industry claims. In her testimony, Ramos-Busot strongly criticized any determination to build new infrastructure for RNG. As defined in state legislation introduced in 2021, RNG is (1) a form of methane, the most potent greenhouse gas (GHG), (2) upgraded biogas, which is a mixture of carbon and methane, or (3) hydrogen gas.
It is important to note that the technology for efficiently producing “green” hydrogen from renewable electricity is not currently scalable. Estimates suggest a 10-year timeline before it is economically viable and market ready. Of additional concern is the proposition that the extant natural gas infrastructure can be used for hydrogen transmission. Combusting and/or mixing natural gas or RNG with hydrogen gas can result in releasing potent pollutants: black carbon and nitrous oxides (NOx). NOx and volatile organic compounds are responsible for accumulated ground-level ozone–a recognized potent toxin associated with a variety of health issues.
Ramos-Busot explained that the energy generation rules currently being debated in the NJ legislature will not sufficiently reduce GHG and will not meet established climate change deadlines. The state’s Energy Master Plan took longer to develop than expected and there have been further delays in DEP rulemaking. Except for one, all Protecting Against Climate Threats (PACT) rulemaking deadlines have been missed. PACT is intended to mitigate climate change threats. Further, none of the benchmarks for decreased GHG emissions established in the Global Warming Response Act and signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2019 and 2020 have been met.
Finally, Murphy’s Executive Order 274, which is intended to cut all GHG emissions by 50 percent below 2006 levels by 2030, will also not be met. Discussing policy shortcomings, Ramos-Busot noted that a set of draft regulations applies only to the electricity generation sector, and this is only about 20 percent of the state’s total GHG emissions, according to recent DEP data. New preventive, proactive regulations must be adopted.