10th Delaware Wetlands Conference – February 6 and 7, 2024
10th Delaware Wetlands Conference – February 6 and 7, 2024 Read More »
Sustainable Princeton making bank on its green efforts
| Sustainable Princeton has been named as the recipient of the Champions in Action Award by Citizens Bank! As a Champion in Action, Sustainable Princeton will benefit from a $50,000 contribution in unrestricted funds, volunteer support from Citizens Bank employees, public relations, and promotional support. Read the full press release and learn more about the Citizens’ Champions in Action program on our website. |
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Sustainable Princeton making bank on its green efforts Read More »
Offshore wind energy gets back in the news and planning in NJ
By Benjamin Storrow, E&E News
New Jersey’s efforts to establish a foothold in the offshore wind industry were buoyed Wednesday when it announced two new projects.
New Jersey was ground zero for offshore wind’s woes in 2023. Now, it’s a testing ground for the industry’s recovery.
New Jersey utility regulators awarded contracts Wednesday to a pair of the largest offshore wind projects ever planned in the United States. The two projects combined would generate enough power to supply 1.8 million homes and deliver an emissions cut equivalent to removing nearly 1.3 million cars from the road.
The decision by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities came on the heels of a Danish developer’s move last year to cancel two projects slated to serve the state. The cancellation dealt a major blow to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s climate and clean energy goals and raised serious questions about the future of offshore wind in the United States.
But in awarding offshore renewable energy credits to Leading Light Wind and Attentive Energy Two, state officials said last year’s setbacks were only temporary.
Related New Jersey wind energy news:
NJ Awards 3.74 GW of New Offshore Wind to Replace Pulled Projects
New Jersey resuscitates offshore wind with two new projects
New Jersey approves two giant offshore wind power projects
“It is the clearest sign of the long-term commitment from the state of New Jersey and Gov. Murphy, and the beginning of the bounce back after a pretty crummy 2023,” said Tim Sullivan, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.
Leading Light Wind would be a 2.4-gigawatt project built more than 40 miles off the New Jersey coast. It is the second-largest offshore wind farm proposed in the United States after a 2.6-GW development off Virginia that’s slated to begin construction later this year. Leading Light is a joint venture of clean energy developers Invenergy and energyRe. The pair are the first American-based developers to win a competitive contract for an offshore wind farm in the United States.
“We sort of ceded this offshore business to foreign companies” because Europe got a head start, Invenergy CEO Michael Polsky said in an interview. But he said U.S. efforts were important for American know-how and “the ability to do things.”
He said the company’s experience developing everything from onshore wind and transmission projects to a natural gas plant supplied by liquified natural gas in El Salvador would aid Invenergy in its first offshore wind venture.
“We know how to deal with new challenges,” Polsky said.
Leading Light will fully develop the 76,000-acre lease it purchased in a federal auction for $645 million. The move contrasts with other companies, which have moved to develop their federal leases in stages. However, a full build-out provides the developers with more certainty and an opportunity to achieve greater economies of scale, creating efficiencies and driving down costs.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.Invenergy
Offshore wind energy gets back in the news and planning in NJ Read More »
Justice Department says Cuomo fostered ‘sexually hostile’ workplace
The investigation “found that the executive chamber under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo … subjected female employees to a sexually hostile work environment”
By Brendan J. Lyons, Times Union
ALBANY — The U.S. Justice Department on Friday announced it had reached an agreement with the New York governor’s office “to resolve the department’s claims that the executive chamber under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo engaged in a pattern or practice of sexual harassment and retaliation” in violation of civil rights laws.
The agreement memorializes reforms that were enacted by Gov. Kathy Hochul and also institutes additional reforms that federal prosecutors said are intended to prevent sexual harassment or retaliation in the executive chamber. The investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office had not been made public until the office announced the agreement on Friday.
But it’s unclear how thorough of an investigation the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn conducted or whether the outcome relied largely on the report issued by the state attorney general’s office in August 2021. That report concluded Cuomo had sexually harassed or acted inappropriately with 11 women. That report also found that Cuomo and some of his top aides had cultivated a toxic workplace.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Justice Department says Cuomo fostered ‘sexually hostile’ workplace Read More »
Vermont Senate won’t override veto of bottle bill expansion
The bottle bill expansion, which Gov. Phil Scott vetoed last summer, would have added more types of containers and raised the handling fee
By Megan Quinn, Waste Dive
Vermont’s state Senate on Tuesday failed to override the governor’s veto of a bill that would have expanded the state’s container deposit program.
The bill, which passed the state’s House and Senate last summer, would have included a wider range of containers in the program, raised the handling fee, expanded the number of redemption locations and established a producer responsibility organization, among other changes.
Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the legislation back in June, saying he was an advocate for recycling but felt the changes proposed for the container deposit system were too labor intensive and “would move us backwards.” He called instead for investing in and improving “zero sort” recycling systems, a reference to single-stream recycling.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Vermont Senate won’t override veto of bottle bill expansion Read More »
Growing waste fire threats blamed on lithium-ion batteries
POSTED BY DEANNE TOTO, Waste Today | JANUARY 16, 2024
More than 5,000 fires occur annually at recycling facilities, according to estimates in a new report from the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, and Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Material recovery facilities (MRFs) increasingly experience catastrophic fires due to lithium-ion batteries erroneously placed in recyclables collected from households. As lithium-ion battery usage grows, so will the risk of fires, according to the organizations.
“RRS surveyed a large portion of the industry, from integrated service providers to standalone companies,” RRS Principal and Vice President Michael Timpane says. “What we found was that the reporting of fires depends on their severity, reporting requirements by the local response agencies, internal policies, and local management practices.
“We also found that most MRF managers were measuring their fire frequency locally, regardless of whether they were reported internally or externally, and were getting better at fire detection and vigilance in their facilities,” he said. “We were especially surprised that the number of fires per year was this high in the survey, though the majority of fires were small events.”
The report says the increased risk of MRF fires has driven up the cost of insuring these facilities. The rate of catastrophic losses has risen by 41 percent over the last five years, with insurance rates increasing from less than 20 cents per $100 insured property value to as much as $10 per $100 insured as providers realize the threat to MRFs from fires, members of the insurance industry say.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Growing waste fire threats blamed on lithium-ion batteries Read More »
