The offshore wind industry is facing new scrutiny as some initial proposals to build big wind farms off coastal waters are running into unforeseen fiscal challenges driven by high inflation, rising interest rates, and continued constraints in the supply chain.
Those factors have led one company to ask to renegotiate its contract to build a 1,200-megawatt offshore wind farm in Massachusetts, a bid so far rejected by regulators there. They have also spurred Public Service Enterprise Group to reconsider its 25% investment in Ørsted’s 1,100-MW project to be built 15 miles off the Atlantic City coast.
Whether those issues are significant enough to slow New Jersey’s aggressive push to be a leader in the emerging industry remains to be seen, but there are critics who hope it does.
“The dirty secret of offshore wind is the economics don’t make sense,’’ said Mike Makarski, a spokesman for Affordable Energy of New Jersey, an organization that has been a persistent critic of the Murphy administration’s plan to shift to 100% clean energy by mid-century.
“The returns on our U.S. projects, including Ocean Wind I (the first approved New Jersey offshore wind farm), are not where we want them to be,’’ said CEO Mads Nipper, but he added the company remains committed to those projects.
Ørsted, PSEG, and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities have discussed the status of the Ocean Wind project, according to Joseph Fiordaliso, president of the BPU, the state agency overseeing the offshore wind initiative.
“Nothing is in jeopardy,’’ he said, making a statement about the potential setbacks at an unrelated BPU meeting earlier this month. “We all want to work it out. We will work it out.’’
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Only 5% of the mountains of plastic waste generated by US households last year was recycled, according to new research by Greenpeace.
Americans discarded 51m tons of wrappers, bottles, and bags in 2021 – about 309lb of plastic per person – of which almost 95% ended up in landfills, oceans, or scattered in the atmosphere in tiny toxic particles.
The plastics problem is not just down to wanton consumerism or laziness – in fact, the situation would still be bad even if every household separated every piece of plastic and disposed of it in a dedicated recycling plant, according to Greenpeace.
Not a single type of plastic packaging in the US meets the definition of recyclable used by either the Federal Trade Commission or the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new plastic economy initiative, the report found.
Even plastics long considered recyclable – bottles and jugs (PET #1 and HDPE #2) –fall far short of the 30% recycling rate needed to meet the definition of recyclable by the foundation. The reprocessing rate for the rest of the plastics used by millions of people every day to wrap leftovers, eat takeout or return unwanted online purchases is less than 5%.
The recycling sham will anger those who have spent time diligently washing out plastic containers and bottles, in the belief that they’d end up reprocessed and repurposed into another plastic package the world probably didn’t need.
“Corporations like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, and Unilever have worked with industry front groups to promote plastic recycling as the solution to plastic waste for decades. But the data is clear: practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable. The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill,” said Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace USA senior plastics campaigner.
Do you agree with the Greenpeace report? Click the comment link under the headline above to express your opinion
The report, Circular Claims Fall Flat Again, updates the 2020 survey of 370 recycling plants which found most plastics were not widely accepted, and even the bottles and jugs were not completely recycled or recyclable. Not much has changed, in fact, the official recycling rate in the US has fallen from a high of 9.5% in 2014 and 8.7% in 2018. At that time, the US, like many countries, exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled even though much of it was burned or dumped.
After China stopped accepting plastic waste in 2018 because it was basically garbage, too dirty to recycle, the shortfall in capacity was never recouped while plastic use kept rising.
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Campaigns in Boston and western Massachusetts are taking aim at existing and proposed peakers. Critics say the facilities are bad for the climate and public health, and that cleaner and more economical alternatives now exist.
Mystic Generating Station in Everett, Massachusetts, is one of 23 peaking plants in the state. Credit: Fletcher6 / Creative Commons
Activists across Massachusetts are pressuring utilities and regulators to reconsider the need for some of the state’s most rarely used and least efficient fossil fuel power plants.
Campaigns in the Boston suburbs and western Massachusetts are taking aim at existing and proposed peaking power plants. The facilities — often simply called “peakers” — are intended to run only at times when demand for electricity is at its highest.
Utilities and grid managers say peakers are necessary to ensure reliability, especially as more intermittent wind and solar generation is added to the system. Critics, though, say they’re bad for the climate and public health, and that cleaner and more economical alternatives now exist.
“They are low-hanging fruit,” said Logan Malik, clean energy director for the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. “They aren’t in use a whole lot of time, and at the same time, technology is available as we speak, today, to replace these dirty plants with clean, renewable alternatives.”
Massachusetts is home to 23 such plants, according to nonprofit research institute Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy. Roughly two-thirds of them burn oil; the remaining plants run on natural gas. More than 90% of the plants are more than 30 years old, and thus more likely to run inefficiently and have higher greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change. Some are so old they are not required to comply with the standards of the 1970 federal Clean Air Act.
Furthermore, they are often located in areas with concentrations of low-income households and residents of color, likely posing additional health risks to populations that are already more vulnerable. When peakers run, it can also raise costs for consumers, as they are generally the most expensive plants to operate.
“There’s just really almost no need for these plants,” said Jane Winn, executive director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team. “Right now, the ratepayers are paying a hell of a lot of money to keep these plants on standby.”
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Murphy Vows to Reduce Pollution in Environmental Justice neighborhoods
Clean Water Action (CWA) joined with NJ Gov. Phil Murphy in Newark on Thursday “to publicly vow to rev up his plans to reduce pollution more and faster than currently planned, especially in overburdened communities.”
The group said the governor also has pledged to “eliminate dirty diesel vehicles and equipment with zero-emission alternatives.”
CWA State Director Amy Goldsmith
“The Garden State is waking up to the reality of today’s climate and environmental injustices. This is not a new revelation to the Governor. He is spot on when he says that we can’t do too much, too soon, too fast,”stated Amy Goldsmith, CWA’s NJ State Director.
Goldman portrayed Democrat Murphy’s opponent for governor, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, as one who is following in the footsteps of the Trump and Christie Administrations, believing Murphy’s clean energy goals are “not realistic and are too much, too soon, too fast.”
“For too long, the children in our environmental justice communities, including the kids right here in Newark, have borne the costs of lead in our tap water and polluting industries concentrated in our neighborhoods, ” said Kim Gaddy, a Newark resident, and CWA’s Environmental Justice Director. “
“By championing the nation’s strongest environmental justice and lead service line laws, Governor Murphy has given everyone in this city a voice to oppose polluting projects that poison our air and water,” Gaddy said.
“Fifty years from now future generations will either look back at us in gratitude for giving up our selfish ways and tackling the climate emergency or they will be living with nightmarish burdens and angrily wondering how a generation could have so brazenly ignored science and doomed the planet, added Janet Tauro, CWAs NJ Board Chair.
“Right now in NJ, we need Governor Murphy’s clear-eyed, dedicated, and robust climate leadership.”
Mayflower Wind strikes Brayton Point deal.Power from future wind farms would come ashore in Somerset
Brayton Point in Somerset provides an interconnection to the regional power grid that was previously used by the coal-fired power plant. (Photo by Bruce Mohl)
Mayflower Wind, which is planning to bring ashore on Cape Cod the electricity generated by its first wind farm, said on Thursday that it intends to shift the landing point for the power produced by its future wind farms off the coast of Massachusetts to Brayton Point in Somerset.
The announcement is good news for Somerset, which has been waiting for years for offshore wind to fill the void left behind by the dismantling of an enormous coal-fired power plant at Brayton Point. But it could be years more before the dream of offshore wind at Brayton Point can actually be realized. Mayflower Wind would need to win a second state procurement and go through a lengthy permitting process before construction of a power line to Brayton Point could begin.
In the meantime, Somerset is struggling. Tax revenues are down and residents are divided over Brayton Point. With offshore wind unable to get moving under the Trump administration, the brownfield developer that tore down the coal-fired power plant had no revenue coming in. The firm angered residents of Somerset by selling space at Brayton Point to noisy and dirty scrap metal and road salt operations. The developer and town are now fighting in court and a strong grassroots operation has emerged calling for an end to the scrap metal and road salt businesses.
Kathy Souza, a leader of the grassroots effort and a candidate for Somerset’s select board, said she was encouraged by the Mayflower Wind announcement. She said the president of the company called Thursday to give her the news and said a community relations director would be in touch with her and other members of the community. “They promised to be honest and upfront. That’s positive,” said Souza.
“We will do everything we can to be a good neighbor and partner,” said Seth Kaplan, director of government and regulatory affairs at Mayflower.
Two companies have secured offshore wind contracts from Massachusetts so far. Vineyard Wind recently won near-final approval for its project from the Biden administration, the first industrial-scale offshore wind farm to do so. Mayflower Wind is awaiting its environmental permits. Both of those wind farms will bring their power ashore on Cape Cod. The two projects will max out the Cape’s electricity infrastructure, which is why Mayflower secured its deal with Brayton Point.
Mayflower, which plans to compete for the state’s next offshore wind procurement, snapped up the Brayton Point connection by acquiring transmission rights developed by a company called Anbaric Development. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Renowned actor Michael Keaton is joining the growing green movement in Pittsburgh. “Growing up, many of my neighbors worked in Pittsburgh’s famous steel plants; the lore was that a businessman would take an extra white shirt to work because the one he started with would get so dirty from the mills’ polluted air that he’d have to put on a fresh one to come home,” Keaton, who was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area, said in a statement on April 22.
To be part of the effort to ensure a more sustainable future, Keaton is taking an ownership stake in a partnership with Nexii, a Canadian enterprise and Trinity Commercial Development, based in Pittsburgh, that will develop a sustainability-based manufacturing plant. The plant, which will be built by Nexii Building Solutions Inc., is the first plant built entirely from Nexii’s sustainable concrete alternative, Nexiite.
In fact, the company will be producing the material and building the plant at the same time. Nexii’s sister Pennsylvania plant, which will open in Hazleton, will produce the Nexiite panels and other materials used to build the Pittsburgh plant. The lightweight panels, which are both thermally efficient and less carbon-intensive than concrete, will be shipped to Pittsburgh and assembled onsite, which will reduce build time by 75% as well as on-site waste. The plant, which will be on a redeveloped brownfield site, is set to open in 2022.
“Nexii’s new plant will create more than 300 green, healthy job opportunities and help revitalize my hometown in a way that helps folks right now while paving the way for future generations,” said Keaton.
The Covanta plant in Newark has operated since 1990. They take in 2,800 tons of waste from 22 municipalities in Essex County as well as New York City. The garbage is burned and then converted into energy. The company says burning trash is a better alternative to dumping garbage in a landfill that produces methane. (Karen Yi | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
Scattered across New Jersey, four looming incinerators spend day and night torching our trash.
The facilities receive tons of waste from homes and businesses each day, burn it all, then recycle the metal that’s left behind and sell the electricity generated in the process to power thousands of homes.
It’s a model that incinerator companies have held up as a cleaner alternative to simply dumping trash in methane-belching landfills. But many Garden State residents living in their shadow, often in places plagued by dirty air, have long seen incinerators as a threat to their health. Organizations advocating for these communities have for years railed against the incinerators and pushed for their closures.
Now, a newly-released catalog of pollution and violations associated with those incinerators, plus information about subsidies provided to the facilities, has opened a new chapter in the controversy.
A new report published Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups details the scope of collective pollution from New Jersey’s four active incinerators, plus one that was retired less than two years ago.
The report also highlights millions of dollars worth of subsidies paid to the incinerators by electric customers, and questions whether such payment was legal.
The findings are presented by Earthjustice, the Vermont Law School Environmental Advocacy Clinic, the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance and the Newark-based Ironbound Community Corporation. The information matches much of what the groups sent in a letter to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities last April. That letter was first reported by Politico.
The two companies that operate New Jersey’s incinerators, Morristown-based Covanta and New Hampshire-based Wheelabrator Technologies, blasted the new report as anti-industry misinformation and defended their environmental records to NJ Advance Media.
Major sources of dirty air
The report focuses on four incinerators currently operating in the state — three facilities run by Covanta in Newark, Camden and Rahway, and another run by Wheelabrator in Gloucester County — plus the former Covanta facility in Warren County that closed in 2019.
Those five incinerators, according to the report, consistently ranked among the largest sources of air pollution in New Jersey between 2015 and 2018, when compared to all 215 facilities with major air permits in in the state — places like factories and power plants.
That pollution is compounded by the incinerators’ proximity to other major industrial facilities, leaving nearby communities to breathe air dirtied by the cumulative effects. The Newark incinerator, for example, is on the edge of the city’s Ironbound neighborhood and near to factories, tank farms, a natural gas power plant and a sewage treatment facility.
“They’re not standalone facilities that are in the middle of nowhere,” Ana Baptista, a Newark-native and professor at The New School who focuses on environmental justice, told NJ Advance Media.
“Even when they’re within their permit limits, they’re part of the problem,” she added.
The legacy of heavy pollution in these places has left residents, who are largely people of color, with higher rates of respiratory problems and at higher risk of COVID-19.
James Regan, a Covanta spokesman, said the locations of the company’s incinerators were chosen years before the company took them over.
“These facilities were sited by local governments for their use,” Regan said. “Covanta operates them as best we can with minimal environmental impact.”
Regan stressed that pollution from incinerators is dwarfed by tailpipe pollution from cars, trucks, buses and other transportation sources in the communities. The transportation sector is the state’s largest source of air pollution, according to the DEP.
But environmentalists argue it is misleading to compare a single source of pollution to the collective total of thousands of other smaller sources. They also point out that transportation pollution is predictable, and theoretically easier to address. Pollution from incinerators, however, can fluctuate based on the type of trash is being burned at a given time.
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U.S. Reps. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) and Kathleen Rice (D-NY-04) today led a bipartisan contingent of New Jersey and New York lawmakers requesting urgent action on offshore wind development.
The Members sent a letterto the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a federal agency within the Department of the Interior, requesting that the agency designate final Wind Energy Areas in the New York Bight and hold new lease auctions for potential developers.
“Growing America’s offshore wind industry is a vital path to reducing our reliance on dirty fossil fuels and modernizing America’s infrastructure for future generations. Right now under Governor Phil Murphy, New Jersey is leading the way in expanding clean energy, especially for offshore wind,” said Rep. Pascrell. “I look forward to working with President Biden’s administration to build on his offshore wind commitments that will support jobs and fight the negative impacts of climate change. I was proud to see my offshore wind tax incentive enacted into law in the year-end relief bill, and am pleased to partner with Rep. Rice to lead our delegations in encouraging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to help our state and region. Because at the end of the day, protecting our planet for our children and grandchildren must be our ultimate goal.”“
As a leader in the fight against climate change, New York State has legally committed to generating 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035–enough energy to power up to six million homes,” said Rep. Rice. “But there is no way that New York, New Jersey, or any other state can meet ambitious goals unless the federal government issues new wind energy area designations. The prolonged delays that we experienced during the Trump Administration stalled efforts at the state level, harming both the environment and the economy in the process. That’s why I led this letter with Congressman Pascrell and our delegation colleagues demanding action and requesting a briefing with BOEM to get the ball rolling again. I’m confident that the Biden Administration will heed our call for action and follow through on its promise to prioritize offshore wind.
”The Biden Administration has already taken positive steps related to offshore wind. On January 27, President Biden signed an executive order directing the Interior secretary to identify steps to double offshore wind production by 2030.“The U.S. needs a post-COVID economic recovery and holding an offshore wind lease sale in the New York Bight is a significant step towards a tremendous energy and economic opportunity,” said Erik Milito, President of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA). “It has been more than two years since the most recent offshore wind lease auction. BOEM should issue the final Wind Energy Areas (WEA) and hold lease auctions in the New York Bight as quickly as possible. NOIA thanks Representatives Rice and Pascrell and the other signatories for their leadership in advancing new wind opportunities for our nation.”
“The tides are shifting towards the clean energy economy,” said Mariah Dignan, Long Island Organizer for Climate Jobs NY. “With the White House laser-focused on taking action on climate by creating thousands of good union jobs, we can kick- start that here with new offshore wind lease areas in the NY bight.”
The letter was also signed by: U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ-06), Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), Nydia Velázquez (NY-07), Gregory W. Meeks (NY-05), Albio Sires (NJ-08), Yvette D. Clarke (NY-09), Paul D. Tonko (NY-20), Tom Reed (NY-23), Donald M. Payne Jr. (NJ-10), Grace Meng (NY-06), Donald Norcross (NJ-01), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05), Thomas R. Suozzi (NY-03), Joseph D. Morelle (NY-25), Andy Kim (NJ-03), Tom Malinowski (NJ-07), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY-16), Mondaire Jones (NY-17), and Ritchie Torres (NY-15)
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New Jersey environmental justice groups want the program shut down.
New Jersey’s renewable credits program has its roots in a 1999 law — most recently updated in 2018 — that requires a share of energy sold in the state to come from renewable sources. | Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
New Jersey waste incinerators were allowed to collect millions of dollars in renewable energy credits even after racking up air permit violations that critics claim should have denied them the state subsidy.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is investigating the allegations, POLITICO has learned. And environmental justice groups in New Jersey are using the regulatory failure to bolster their case that the program be shut down completely.
They say incinerators, which tend to be located near lower-income communities, contribute to pollution and should not be considered sources of clean power.
Maria Lopez-Nunez
“We paid for our own disproportionate deaths,” said Maria Lopez-Nuñez, director of environmental justice and community development for Ironbound Community Corp., a Newark-based social services group. “People are losing their homes, their lives and their livelihoods, and we’re subsidizing a dirty industry.”
Across the country, 23 states — including Oregon, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Virginia — include energy from incinerators in their renewable portfolio standards, according to data from the Energy Recovery Council.. For years, environmental groups coast to coast have asserted that burning garbage undermines governments’ green agendas.
That argument is gaining ground as the environmental justice movement amasses influence across the U.S. and in Washington. A growing body of research has exposed the health and social costs paid by fenceline communities, which have long fought to evict sources of industrial pollution from their neighborhoods, with limited success.
In New Jersey, the issue was raised in a letter obtained by POLITICO through a public records request. In it, lawyers for Ironbound Community Corp. and New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance presented data showing that the state’s five incinerators have violated federal and state laws, including the Clean Air Act, every year since 2004.
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An analysis of state data showed incinerators had been cited for more than 800 permit violations between 2004 and 2020, the groups said. Still, the incinerators continued to sell renewable energy certificates worth more than $30 million worth, an estimate based on data provided by the Board of Public Utilities and PJM, the state’s grid operator.
The incinerator investigation has surfaced as the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection writes rules to implement a landmark environmental justice law passed in August. More than a decade in the making, the law aims to limit new pollution sources in overburdened neighborhoods and impose stricter conditions on permit renewals for existing facilities, like incinerators.
James Regan, a spokesperson for Covanta Holding Corp., which operates three waste-to-energy facilities in the state, said the letter mischaracterized the company’s performance.
“The assertion of hundreds of violations is really a sensationalized account of the actual events,” Regan said. “One event may lead to multiple types of violations due to our permit, but it’s not hundreds of events.”
A spokesperson at Wheelabrator Technologies, which operates a single New Jersey site, did not respond to requests for comment.
Shawn LaTourette
DEP Acting Commissioner Shawn LaTourette also found fault with the group’s claims.
“Not every violation is created equal. Some violations can be ministerial, some violations can be of low environmental and public health consequence individually,” LaTourette said. A simple count of violations doesn’t determine whether a facility is in compliance, he said.
New Jersey’s renewable credits program has its roots in a 1999 law — most recently updated in 2018 — that requires a share of energy sold in the state to come from renewable sources. By 2025, the state must get 35 percent of its energy from renewable energy sources such as wind and wave. Another 2.5 percent must come from second-tier sources, which the state defines as hydropower and resource recovery facilities such as incinerators.
Between 2004 and 2019, on average, nearly 90 percent of second-tier energy came from incinerators, according to data from PJM.
An in-state incinerator is eligible to sell renewable energy certificates only if it meets “the highest environmental standards and minimizes any impacts to the environment and local communities,” limits that never were explicitly defined under New Jersey’s Electric Discount and Energy Competition Act.
LaTourette said the department is open to exploring a rulemaking process to set criteria for meeting the “highest environmental standards” laid out in the law.
President-elect Joe Biden chose Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) Thursday to serve as the first Native American Cabinet secretary and head the Interior Department, a historic pick that marks a turning point for the U.S. government’s relationship with the nation’s Indigenous peoples.
With that selection and others this week, Biden sent a clear message that top officials charged with confronting the nation’s environmental problems will have a shared experience with the Americans who have disproportionately been affected by toxic air and polluted land.
“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland tweeted Thursday night. “ … I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”
In addition to Haaland, Biden has turned to North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S. Regan to become the first Black man to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory to serve as the first Black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
While the picks represent a concession to progressives in Biden’s party, who publicly campaigned for an American Indian at the helm of Interior, they were also chosen to personify Biden’s plans to address the long-standing burdens low-income and minority communities have shouldered when it comes to dirty air and water. All three nominees will play a central role in realizing his promises to combat climate change, embrace green energy and address environmental racism.
“We have individuals coming to these positions who have seen what it’s like on the other side, in terms of communities that have suffered,” environmental justice pioneer Bob Bullard said in an interview Thursday. “They have been fighting for justice. Now they are in a position to make change and make policy. That, to me, has the potential to be transformative.”
Earlier this week, Biden chose former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (D), a proponent of zero-emission vehicles, as his energy secretary nominee. He also established the first White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and designated former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to head it. Former Obama budget official Ali Zaidi will serve as her deputy.
