Environment and Coronavirus bills on NJ Senate board list for Thursday, October 29

The NJ Senate will meet on Thursday, October 29 at 2 p.m. Among the bills scheduled for votes are the following:

Environment

S938 (Pennacchio / Turner) – Exempts from local approvals installation of electric vehicle charging station at gasoline service station that meets certain requirements.

S2804 (Smith / Greenstein / Singleton) – Requires BPU to conduct certain analysis and comparison study of electric transmission grid operating in New Jersey.

Coronavirus

S2553 (Gopal / Kean) – Provides in-State tuition status to certain veterans and family members who attend public institutions of higher education during period of mandatory remote instruction due to public health emergencies.

S2691 (Greenstein) – Requires Division of Local Government Services to approve local unit budgets with excess anticipated miscellaneous revenue due to COVID-19 and authorizes school districts to maintain surplus at four percent for 2020-2021 school year.

S2784 (Cryan / Sarlo) – Dedicates personal protective equipment to long-term care facilities, home health agencies, hospice care providers, health care service firms, PACE programs, and certain community-based providers during public health emergency.

S2849 (Ruiz / Greenstein) – Directs NJ Department of Agriculture to request necessary waivers from US Department of Agriculture to provide food and meals during school closures due to COVID-19 public health emergency.

A4182 / S2873 (Giblin / Wimberly / Calabrese / Singleton / Cryan) – Requires landlord to allow tenant to make rent payment using credit card during COVID-19 pandemic.

A4282 / A4150 / S2566 / S2677 (Pinkin / Karabinchak / Benson / Diegnan / Gopal / Vitale) – Requires long term care facilities and hospitals to maintain minimum supply of personal protective equipment.

A4442 / S2755 (Downey / Benson / Houghtaling / Gopal / Bucco) – Authorizes individuals who have passed road test to use driving permit to operate motor vehicle for 60 days during COVID-19 public health emergency.

A4461 / S2698 (Lampitt / Jasey / Quijano / Ruiz / Turner) – Requires State to enter into contract and coordinate with certain cooperative purchasing systems for procurement of COVID-19 related goods and services by school districts and county colleges.

Vote to concur with Assembly Amendments to the following:
S2354 (Greenstein / Oroho / Bramnick) – Prohibits cancellation or nonrenewal of certain insurance policies and insurance premium finance agreements for a period of at least 60 days under certain circumstances after declaration of public health emergency, or state of emergency, or both.

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A climate denier’s arrival raises fears that NOAA’s climate Mission is under attack

David Legates has spent his career disputing climate science. Now he’s a top manager in the federal agency most involved in assessing global warming’s threat.

By Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News

In the shadow of the Trump administration’s dismissal of climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has continued to press on with its work measuring the breadth and pace of the climate crisis.

So far in 2020, NOAA recorded the nation’s hottest summer on record, the second-lowest Arctic sea ice minimum and the greatest number of hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast since 1916. NOAA led a team that showed global warming is detectable at the bottom of the ocean. It funded work revealing the climate risks of coastal forest destruction. It helped develop a breakthrough method of measuring fossil fuel emissions in ambient air.

But climate scientists are bracing for the potential disruption of NOAA’s climate work with the appointment of two prominent climate science deniers and a former campaign official for President Donald Trump to top agency positions this fall. 

The hiring of Legates and others, only weeks before the election, comes just as NOAA is set to collaborate with more than a dozen other federal agencies on the next Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment, due out in 2023. Work on the project kicked off in earnest on Oct. 15 when a call for authors was published in the Federal Register. The state-of-the-science synthesis of climate impacts and trends across the United States is meant to serve as a roadmap for policymakers. 

Veterans of the process fear the new hires may presage a Trump administration effort to inject doubt about the scientific consensus into the climate assessment. 

Foes of climate action hope that’s the signal being sent. 

Read the full story

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Interior hunkers down, saying their guy isn’t leaving despite court order

Interior says Pendley to remain at BLM despite 'dramatic tweets' from Democrats
William Perry Pendley 

BY Rebeca Beitsch, The Hill

House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) urged the Department of the Interior to press pause on many of its public lands decisions after its Bureau of Land Management (BLM) de facto director was ousted by the courts.

The Department of the Interior responded by saying it would not be pushed to remove William Perry Pendley from the department.

A decision from U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris last month determined Pendley had “served unlawfully … for 424 days” and tossed major land management plans he oversaw in Montana.

Pendley, a controversial figure due in part to his history of opposing federal ownership of the lands he now manages, served at the department through a series of temporary orders, remaining in the job even after his formal nomination was withdrawn.

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Residents fear 169m wind turbine would cast shadow over Irish town’s new tourism plans

Fáilte Ireland has ‘serious concerns’ about siting and scale of proposed development

Ellen O’Riordan, Irish Times

Hilary Tully, Patrick McGivney and Judy Sheridan objected to the planning application sought by Kiernan Milling. Photograph: Alan Betson

Hilary Tully, Patrick McGivney and Judy Sheridan objected to the planning application sought by Kiernan Milling. Photograph: Alan Betson

On a clear day, a person standing atop Granard Motte will be able to see five lakes, nine counties and three provinces of Ireland.

Recently, the sod was turned on the land below (known as the Bailey) for what will become the town’s prize attraction, a Norman heritage park. The €3.8 million tourism investment aims to make the Longford town of Granard – which is currently a busy throughway to the north – a place to stop and explore.

However locals fear a proposed 169m wind turbine will cast an anachronistic shadow over their Norman village.

Patrick McGivney (30), who has grown up in the town, believes the industrial structure will undermine years of grassroots effort to develop the area into a destination.

“We are not known as a tourist town, but that is the vision. There are big dreams here,” he says. “Now to see all that work and effort to have that potentially undermined by a structure this size is really worrying.”

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Solar manufacturing gap between India, China growing, says report

As a result, Chinese companies are testing several emerging technologies with significantly higher efficiencies compared to modules which are currently in production

By Kaavya Chandrasekaran, Economic Times Energy World

Solar manufacturing gap between India, China growing, says report

BENGALURU: The gap between solar manufacturing in India and China has been increasing with leading Chinese manufacturers making aggressive investments in capacity expansion and new technology, according to a recent report by renewable energy consultancy firm, Bridge To India.

“Long-term viability of the Indian manufacturing sector depends on its capacity to compete with leading Chinese manufacturers on cost of production, scale and technology,” the report on solar manufacturing said. It also noted that it would be challenging for Indian manufacturers to bridge the cost disadvantage with the Chinese players. “Indian companies are banking mainly on tariff barriers and incentives in form of capital and/or operating cost subsidies,” it said. The biggest risks they face are those of policy uncertainty and lack of in-house technology.

Indeed the Indian government attempted to address the policy uncertainty issue when it announced earlier this year that it would impose a basic customs duty on solar cells and modules as part of the bigger “Make In India” scheme. But the industry is growing impatient because the government has not provided any details such as a timeline since then, although the announcement was made in June.

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Oh dear, an electric Hummer?!

By Dan Gearino, Inside Clean Energy
The Hummer brand once stood out as a symbol of gross excess.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a rabid fan of the vehicle, which looked like one of his movies in four-wheel form—and not one of the good movies, one that you were ashamed to admit you had seen three times.

The flagship H1 went on sale to the general public in 1992. It weighed about four tons and had fuel economy of about 10 mpg—so bad you could imagine the fumes causing birds to fall out of the sky.

Audacity was the point with Hummer, and that is still the case. This week, General Motors revealed the first vehicle in a revival of the brand, a truck that is big, powerful and, maybe most audacious, all-electric.
The new Hummer made its debut Wednesday with the release of a five-minute film, in which the environmental benefits of the EV are secondary to its raw power.

“Introducing the world’s first all-electric supertruck, the revolutionary GMC Hummer EV, with no limits, no emissions and no equals,” the film’s narrator says over the propulsive beat of a  Led Zeppelin cover. “It will leave everything you thought possible in a cloud of dust.”

The vehicle is scheduled to go on sale in late 2021, with a price tag of $112,595 and a battery range of 350 miles. It is the first of what will be a line of Hummer EVs.

General Motors is positioning the Hummer as a challenger to Tesla’s Cybertruck, which also is scheduled to go on sale in late 2021.

So far, Tesla has dominated the EV market, and the company’s rivals are figuring out how to catch up, right as projections have that market soaring. For GM, a crucial part of the strategy is turning its existing strength in gasoline-powered trucks and SUVs into success in selling electric models in those categories.

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Jon Krosnick, an expert in public opinion research who teaches at Stanford University, said it is remarkable that automakers are investing heavily in electric trucks, because there is little evidence that truck buyers are clamoring for electric options.

EVs, including all-electric and gas-electric hybrids, accounted for about 2 percent of new car and truck sales last year in the United States. 

“I see a kind of boldness on the part for the industry to say, ‘We’re not going to wait for consumers to demand this,’” he said. “‘We’re going to create the opportunities for them before the demand is there, because it’s the right thing to do.’”

Krosnick said GM is sending a message with the Hummer that a truck “dripping with machismo” can also be electric.

Few buyers will be able to afford the new Hummer, but marketing it could be an important part of challenging the idea that EVs are small sedans driven mostly by people who live on the coasts.

Notice I’m not talking about the new Hummer as environmentally friendly. Gigantic vehicles, even electric ones, have substantial lifecycle emissions associated with the materials that go into them, and they contribute to the often-harmful perception that our cities need wide roads.

So, if you want to help the planet, don’t drive at all, or drive a smaller EV like a Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model 3. And yes, I realize that the previous sentence completely misses the point of what GM is trying to do.

Top Photo Credit: GM; Bottom Photo Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images

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