By Michele S. Byers, New Jersey Conservation Foundation
If there’s any doubt that New Jersey is the Garden State, visit a local farm stand or a farmers’ market. This time of year, you will find some of the world’s most delicious produce: fresh Jersey tomatoes, peaches, sweet corn, peppers, blueberries, melons, squash and much more.
What makes them so good? One key ingredient is excellent soil. New Jersey has some of the best agricultural soils on Earth, perfect for growing a wide variety of foods.
These “prime” and “statewide important” soils are an incredibly precious natural resource that should never be taken for granted or squandered.
That’s why a proposed law to encourage large utility-scale solar projects without provisions to keep it off our best farmland and open space is a bad idea, no matter how well intentioned it may be.
The proposed legislation, S-2605, would toss out New Jersey’s existing solar siting policies, including provisions to restrict solar on farmland and redirect it to sites like brownfields, landfills, rooftops and parking lots.
The proposed law would not only make it easier to build large, utility-scale solar arrays on the state’s best farmland, it would also allow forests to be clear-cut to make way for solar projects, which makes no sense. Forests store the equivalent of 8% of New Jersey’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
Make no mistake, encouraging solar energy is essential and is a critical part of New Jersey’s clean energy future.
By using a mix of solar, offshore wind and other clean technologies, this state we’re in plans to transition to 100% clean energy by 2050 for its power supply. Reducing the state’s reliance on fossil fuels is critical to combating climate change.
But solar energy projects must be built in the right places. And high quality farmland and forests are most definitely not the right places.
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