“Meeting our future energy needs reliably and affordably while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most difficult issues facing New Jersey policymakers in the decades ahead.”
That statement, by Mark Magyar, director of Rowan University’s Sweeney Center, squarely identified the core issue at the center’s Feb. 27 conference, “Meeting New Jersey’s Energy Needs.”
The conference brought together a number of state energy policymakers and suppliers to consider the state’s future energy needs at a moment when much of the work done to transform the state’s energy portfolio is under threat.
Michael Renna, chief executive officer of South Jersey Industries, said this is “a very interesting time with respect to energy and energy policy” in what may have been the greatest understatement of the conference. One after the other, industry representatives moved from one potential energy source to another, but always within the context of energy demand far out stripping supply as the movement to a new emissions-free energy future stalls.
Board of Public Utilities President Christina Guhl-Sadovy spoke of success in reducing electricity capacity costs. She did this at a time when there is building public pressure on elected officials over rising bills for residential customers across the state, with many of them placing the blame on the PBU.
Tim Sullivan, CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, responded to the public pressure against offshore wind. “We have the opportunity for tens of thousands of good paying jobs, and we find people celebrating the challenges that have stalled or stopped the effort. I have never seen the like.”
Paulina O’Connor, executive director of the Offshore Wind Alliance, echoed remarks about lost opportunities to strengthen and advance the state’s economy while also contributing to alternative energy supply options.
The remarks on offshore wind came in the wake of resistance from the Trump administration that has led to paused federal permitting and emboldened local opposition.
Just days before the conference, the French energy company EDF Group put an impairment cost of more than $900 million euros onto the 2024 balance sheet. The company acted just weeks after its American partner, Shell plc, pulled out of their joint project for a 200-turbine wind farm in two federal lease areas off the coast of Long Beach Island and Atlantic City. Shell took its own $1 billion write-down as it exited.
The wind port in Salem County that benefited from much state financing may now find itself seeking a new purpose unless something new breaks open the current lull in wind farm construction in New Jersey.
PJM Interconnection Senior Vice President Asim Haque said what everyone knows: “We need watts.” PJM has quickly become an industry scapegoat for supply/demand imbalance and soaring prices. Haque talked of PJM protocol changes that will bring on alternative energy sources faster. PJM has been blamed for taking too long to add new power sources to the power grid.
As Sullivan spoke of artificial intelligence and data center growth as “a demand monster,” others argued that the state needs to refocus attention on nuclear and natural gas, the two sources of supply that largely meet state demand today.
Renna said he was not against nuclear, but “we are not going to be seeing new nuclear plants across New Jersey anytime soon.”
Lawrence Barth of New Jersey Clean Energy Ventures was not so sure. “This is not the nuclear of your grandpa’s day,” Barth said.
Others pushed for expansion of the state’s impressive footprint in solar energy with new solar farms. Yet, in some areas industrial-size solar farms are now provoking local resistance similar to that seen with offshore wind farms.
The conference did its job in outlining the many issues and options that face state policymakers. Yet uncertainty, especially in light of changes in political leadership and public pushback on certain paths to energy development, hamper policy development.
While sorting those issues out there is not even the comfort of a stable status quo, since fossil fuel plants have been decommissioned or are in that process. The state is in the midst of an energy transformation that has already begun and has progressed part way down a number of paths.
The conference gave context to the difficulties facing New Jersey policymakers but did so without consensus on the best way the state could move forward.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
