EnviroPolitics Blog

Energy experts offer insights at NJ state joint-committee hearing

By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor

New Jersey lawmakers from both chambers questioned energy experts and state officials on August 14 about surging electricity prices, setbacks to offshore wind projects, and the future of New Jersey’s clean energy strategy.

The hearing, held in the shore town of Point Pleasant by the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment Committee, featured testimony from the president of the Board of Public Utilities and a diverse lineup of academics, industry leaders, and policy advocates. Their insights revealed both the promise and pitfalls of the state’s ambitious energy transition.

🔍 Speaker Highlights

Christine Guhl-Sadovy – President, NJ Board of Public Utilities

• Announced $100 in bill credits for residential customers to offset recent 20% electricity rate hikes.

• Defended offshore wind investments despite setbacks, citing long-term affordability and climate goals.

• Faced bipartisan criticism for lack of short-term solutions and transparency.

Abe Silverman – Johns Hopkins University

• Warned that federal permitting delays and market volatility are undermining clean energy progress.

• Urged New Jersey to diversify its energy portfolio beyond offshore wind.

Dr. Onur Bilgen – Rutgers University

• Presented research on tidal and wave energy potential along NJ’s coast.

• Called for pilot projects and state funding to validate feasibility.

Assemblyman Robert Karabinchak (LD-18)

• Advocated for legislative support of ocean energy technologies.

• Framed tidal and wave energy as a strategic complement to offshore wind.

Philipp Stratmann – CEO, Ocean Power Technologies

• Highlighted successful wave energy deployments globally.

• Urged streamlined permitting and incentives for private-sector innovation.

David Weis – Princeton University

• Shared Princeton’s success with thermal energy networks.

• Argued for district-scale geothermal systems in urban redevelopment zones.

Alex McWard – National Conference of State Legislatures

• Recommended expanding smart metering and dynamic pricing to reduce peak demand.

• Provided national context on demand-side management programs.

Alex Dill & Christine Symington – Sustainable Princeton

• Called for equitable home energy retrofit programs.

• Emphasized community engagement and affordability for low-income households.

Dalton Oberfoell – NCSL

• Discussed legislative trends supporting small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

• Encouraged NJ to consider pilot SMR projects for clean baseload power.

Kelly Trice & Dr. Kris Singh – Holtec International

• Promoted Holtec’s SMR technology as scalable, safe, and deployable within five years.

• Positioned nuclear as essential to meeting reliability and decarbonization goals.

Click the link below for a recording of the hearing

https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/archived-media/2024/SEN-meeting-list/media-player?committee=SEN&agendaDate=2025-08-14-10:00:00&agendaType=M&av=A

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Trump wants to keep old power plants burning. It will cost you.

By Jeff St. John, Canary Media

J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant with pile of coal in front — Consumers Energy had planned to retire the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in May, but President Trump ordered it to keep operating, citing an energy emergency that critics say isn’t happening. (Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

A new report finds the Trump administration’s push to keep dirty, aging fossil-fueled power plants from closing down could end up costing U.S. utility customers between $3 billion and nearly $6 billion per year by the end of Trump’s term — and that’s a conservative estimate.

Thursday’s report from consultancy Grid Strategies was commissioned by Earthjustice, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club, four environmental groups that have joined states in challenging the Department of Energy’s use of emergency powers to keep the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan and the Eddystone oil- and gas-burning plant in Pennsylvania running.

Both plants were set to close earlier this year, but the DOE used its emergency authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to order them to stay open for 90 days, and it could issue more orders to keep them running beyond that time period.

State regulators and environmental and consumer advocates fear that the DOE is just getting going. An April executive order from President Donald Trump tasked the DOE with taking unilateral authority over power-plant closures in the name of grid reliability, which could circumvent practices long-established by utilities, state regulators, regional grid operators, and federal regulators.

In July, the DOE issued a report claiming that the country faces threats of massive blackouts if the federal government doesn’t intervene. But critics say that to arrive at this conclusion, the DOE cherry-picked data and ignored the massive amounts of new solar, wind, and battery resources set to come online in the coming years.

Read the full story here

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Her dogs kept dying, and she got cancer. Then, the water test

Debbie Blankenship wheels herself through her garden. (Caroline Gutman/For The Washington Post)

By Amudalat Ajasa, Washington Post

ELKTON, Md. — Debbie Blankenship’s wheelchair carved perfect lines in the grass as she rolled into her backyard garden, passing a wooden arch filled with small grapes, a bush with plump blueberries, and yellow crates filled with sprouting potatoes.

She stopped at a dirt patch with a burial marker for her beagle — the latest of her dogs to die of cancer.

“They are all buried back here. It’s like a pet cemetery,” she said, catching her breath from navigating the hilly terrain. Gazing at the burial site, she spoke about her own long battle with cancer.

For decades, Blankenship chalked up her health problems, including losing her right leg to an infection, to bad luck. Then in 2023, she received a phone call from W.L. Gore & Associates, which makes waterproof membranes such as Gore-Tex and a host of other products. Gore wanted to test Blankenship’s well water for PFOA, a highly toxic “forever chemical” that was used to make PTFE, commonly known as Teflon.

“That’s when the light went off,” she said. She and her dogs were the only members of the household to drink the well water. Her husband and children always drank bottled water.

Read the full story here

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Once-soaring solar sector slams into a stiff Trump bump

By Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent, NJ Spotlight News

WASHINGTON — The U.S. solar industry hit a record in 2023, putting the most capacity ever on domestic power grids.

Then last year, it broke that record, installing 21% more.

But under the second Trump administration and a Republican-majority Congress largely hostile to renewable energy, the industry in New Jersey and elsewhere is facing a series of barriers after years of growth, and all the while it is buffeted with back-and-forth tariffs that spark international trade disputes.

Chief among these barriers is a new federal law that weakened renewable energy tax credits for wind and solar power and a recent Trump administration decision to cancel all funding from a $7 billion grant program that goes to residential solar projects for lower-income homes.

“I think it’s, coupled with the pending repeal of the tax credits, really a one-two punch that is going to make it harder for people to go solar, save money and create jobs,” Ben Delman, editorial director for Solar United Neighbors, a nonprofit advocacy group, said of the new law and the canceled grant money.

“The industry is trying to figure out where to go next,” Delman said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “In some ways, it feels like we’re walking backwards.”

Expiring tax credit

Changing tariffs and interest rates are also barriers for the industry, he said.

Because of a new federal budget law Congress wrote this year, a federal tax credit to help people pay to put solar panels on their homes will expire Dec. 31, instead of in 2034, almost a decade ahead of schedule.

Read the full story here

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New Jersey joint environmental committee meeting RELOCATED

The location of today’s joint meeting of New Jersey’s Senate and Assembly environmental committees, scheduled for 10 a.m., has been relocated from Toms River, NJ to the:

Point Pleasant Municipal Court at 2233 Bridge Avenue in Point Pleasant, NJ

The committees will take testimony from invited speakers on the topics of:

Tidal and wave energy,

Geothermal energy,

Demand-side management,

Advanced nuclear technologies, and,

The progress of the Board of Public Utilities in exploring energy technologies.

It’s possible, but not guaranteed, that you may listen to the testimony here

Please ignore the previous post stating that the meeting was canceled.

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Dwindling in numbers, Purple Martins find refuge at this LV hospital

A purple martin perches on one of a series of birdhouses Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025, at St. Luke’s-Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township. Purple martins, a type of swallow, were once commonplace in the Lehigh Valley. (Monica Cabrera/The Morning Call)

By Daniel Patrick Sheehan | dsheehan@mcall.com | The Morning Call

A hawk or an eagle had been circling overhead earlier, so Tom Fiorini wasn’t sure the purple martins would be hanging around Thursday morning as he led a couple of visitors to the birds’ new dwelling place, a cluster of gourd-shaped plastic houses atop a tall metal pole.

The white houses are set among the acres of sunflowers and patches of bright wildflowers at St. Luke’s Hospital-Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township, where a vast swath of the 500-acre property is given over to nature and overseen by Fiorini, the health network’s director of landscape services.

As luck had it, a martin was perched atop one of the houses, albeit briefly. There were, presumably, bugs to catch — martins eat them practically by the pound — so it flitted off into the late-morning sun as the visitors drew near.

It was a heartening sight. Purple martins, a type of swallow and the largest of the North American varieties, were once common in the Lehigh Valley, but their numbers have fallen over the years. Farmers attracted them by erecting houses, because they eat crop-damaging insects, but as farmland vanished, so did the birds.

Read the full story here

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