BPU to energy suppliers: Your passthroughs aren’t kosher

Tens of millions of dollars on the line as third-party suppliers dispute Board of Public Utilities’ order not to increase fixed rate during the term of contracts

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

Solar panels

Credit: James Moran/Flickr
In a dispute arising out of the state’s new clean-energy law, independent energy suppliers have been ordered to stop passing on higher costs to customers as a result of expanded requirements to supply solar energy.
The New Jersey Board of Utilities ordered so-called third-party suppliers to halt the practice and to refund customers, a step that could run into tens of millions of dollars, according to representatives of the Retail Energy Supply Association, which is contesting the order.
The issue involves only customers who have switched from their incumbent electric utility to third-party suppliers with fixed-price contracts. The board’s staff warned increasing the fixed rate during the term of a contract is prohibited by energy competition rules adopted by the agency.
But the suppliers counter that the new energy law includes a provision recognizing the added solar purchase requirements reflect a change in law, allowing price increases to pass on the obligations to existing customer contracts.
“The conclusion that suppliers must ‘cease and desist’ from passing through increased charges due to the CEA (Clean Energy Law) appears to be based on the flawed reasoning that comments from the board staff override a statute that was subsequently enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the state of New Jersey and signed into law by the Governor on May 23, 2018,’’ according to a brief filed by the suppliers’ association.

A question of fairness

The price increases across all the energy suppliers could amount to as much as $70 million or more, according to Robert Gibbs, director of corporate and regulatory affairs for Direct Energy, one of the largest retail energy suppliers in the state. “It wouldn’t be fair for us to eat those costs,’’ he said.
The BPU declined to comment on the matter since it is pending before the agency and will be dealt with at an upcoming agenda meeting, according to Peter Peretzman, a spokesman for the board.
In its letter in late January ordering suppliers to stop passing on the costs, however, it acknowledged the likelihood that the energy companies would like to pass on costs to customers to recoup those costs.
“However, for many customers, this would defeat the purpose of a fixed price contract,’’ the board contended. “Customers who choose fixed price contracts do so in order to avoid price risk.’’

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Ruined crops, salty soil: How rising seas are poisoning coastal North Carolina’s farmland


East Carolina University graduate students Trevor Burns, left, and Tyler Palochak check groundwater monitoring equipment on a farm near Engelhard, N.C., in January. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)
By Sarah Kaplan

MIDDLETOWN, N.C. — The salty patches were small, at first — scattered spots where soybeans wouldn’t grow, where grass withered and died, exposing expanses of bare, brown earth.
But lately those barren patches have grown. On dry days, the salt precipitates out of the mud and the crystals make the soil sparkle in the sunlight. And on a damp and chilly afternoon in January, the salt makes Dawson Pugh furrow his brow in dismay.
“It’s been getting worse,” the farmer tells East Carolina University hydrologist Alex Manda, who drove out to this corner of coastal North Carolina with a group of graduate students to figure out what’s poisoning Pugh’s land — and whether anything can be done to stop it.

Of climate change’s many plagues — drought, insects, fires, floods — saltwater intrusion in particular sounds almost like a biblical curse. Rising seas, sinking earth and extreme weather are conspiring to cause salt from the ocean to contaminate aquifers and turn formerly fertile fields barren. A 2016 study in the journal Science predicted that 9 percent of the U.S. coastline is vulnerable to saltwater intrusion — a percentage likely to grow as the world continues to warm. Scientists are just beginning to assess the potential effect on agriculture, Manda said, and it’s not yet clear how much can be mitigated.
“We spend a lot of time and money to try to prevent salt,” Pugh says. “I worry what the future is. If it keeps getting worse, will it be worth farming?”
If farmers in coastal areas have any hope of protecting their land — and their livelihoods — the first step is to disentangle the complex web of causes that can send ocean water seeping into the ground beneath their feet.

East Carolina University graduate students use a probe to check the chemistry of water in a ditch on the farm. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

Alex Manda, a hydrologist at East Carolina University, sets up a weather station as part of the effort to determine what’s happening to coastal farmland. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

Sensors lay on the ground beside a nest of scientific wells as Manda’s graduate students from East Carolina University study the groundwater. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

With that goal in mind, Pugh, Manda and Andrea Gibbs, the local agriculture agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension, convened at the edge of Pugh’s saltiest field on a recent blustery afternoon.
Pugh, 41, has spent his adult life growing soybeans, corn and cotton in North Carolina’s “blacklands,” where the dark and fertile soil is a legacy of nutrient-rich swamps that were drained to make the region arable. His father farmed here in Hyde County before him, and his grandfather before that. Pugh felt he was prepared for the challenges he would face with the brackish Pamlico Sound within spitting distance and just the thin sandy barrier of the Outer Banks between his farmland and the open ocean.

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Number of electric car charging outlets will double this year in N.J. thanks to one car maker’s trickery

By Chris Sheldon | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The number of electric car charging outlets in New Jersey is set to double as hundreds will be added by the state this year using money paid by Volkswagen to settle allegations that it used trickery to skirt emissions tests.
The DEP will use $3.2 million to award grants for 827 charging outlets at 533 charging stations under Its Pay$ to Plug In electric vehicle charging grant program, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced Thursday.
The state currently has 786 charging outlets at 322 public locations.
Fifty five municipalities and counties, public parking lots and garages, apartment and condominium complexes, car-share services, hotels, private companies and nonprofit organizations will be receiving the charging stations, the DEP said.
They will also be installed at several NJ Transit train stations and at rest stops along the Atlantic City Expressway.
A full list of places where they will installed can be seen here.
The funding for the charging stations comes from the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust, which is the result of federal actions against the automaker for installing “defeat” devices that allowed vehicles it manufactured to emit pollutants without being detected by emissions-testing programs across the country, the DEP said.
New Jersey is receiving $72.2 million in settlement funds and Gov. Phil Murphy has committed to using $10.8 million of that total for electric-vehicle charging stations, officials said.
Another $8 million will be used buy eight new electric transit buses that will be operated by Camden.
“We are pleased that this funding will help us pilot an electric bus program here in New Jersey to study in real-world scenarios the benefits and challenges of utilizing this alternate energy source,” NJ TRANSIT Executive Director Kevin Corbett said in a release. “Part of the NJ TRANSIT goal of providing world-class transportation services is to do so through the lens of environmental responsibility. By investigating the possibilities of alternate energy sources, we can advance our commitment to sustaining clean air throughout the state.”
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Bills on Deck for next NJ Senate Enviro Committee Meeting


The Senate Environment and Energy Committee will meet on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at 10:00 AM in Committee Room 6, 1st Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ.

The following bills will be considered:

S1614 (Kean / Andrzejczak) – Increases amount annually credited to Shore Protection Fund to $50 million.

S1742 (Greenstein) – Requires water purveyors to conduct, and report to DEP, water loss audits.

S1768 (Greenstein / Diegnan) – Requires DOT to prioritize green stormwater infrastructure in design, construction, reconstruction, and repair of public highways.

S1774 (Greenstein) – Specifies minimum 20-year planning duration for NJ Statewide Water Supply Plan and adds new requirements for the plan.

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S3000 (Bateman) – Establishes “Jersey Native Plants Program.”

S3146 (Singleton / Addiego) – Establishes owning or possessing animal fighting or dog fighting paraphernalia as crime of third degree; establishes civil animal cruelty penalties therefor.

S3457 (Sweeney) – Appropriates $450,000 for Hooked on Fishing-Not on Drugs Program.

S3470 (Smith) – Authorizes sale and conveyance of certain State-owned real property in Stafford Township, Ocean County to US Fish and Wildlife Service.

SR85 (Van Drew / Greenstein) – Supports designation of Atlantic City as international center on global warming and climate change.

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Andrew Wheeler, former energy lobbyist, confirmed as nation’s top environmental official

As acting chief at the EPA, Wheeler has advanced the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda. 

Wheeler on climate change: ‘I would not call it the greatest crisis’
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) grilled EPA administrator nominee Andrew Wheeler about climate change on Jan. 15. (Reuters)







By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post
February 28 at 1:09 PM


The Senate on Thursday approved former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to head the Environmental Protection Agency by a vote of 52 to 47, elevating a veteran of Washington political and industry circles who has advanced President Trump’s push to rollback Obama-era environmental regulations.
Wheeler, who began his career at EPA during the 1990s but spent years on Capitol Hill before heading to the private sector, has won praise from Republicans for his deregulatory agenda but criticism from Democrats for his refusal to take action on climate change and several public health priorities. 

He has been running the agency since Trump’s first administrator, Scott Pruitt, stepped down in July amid multiple scandals surrounding his management and spending practices. Trump said in November that he intended to nominate Wheeler for the top job, saying he had done a “fantastic job” in his interim role.
At his confirmation hearing in January, Wheeler highlighted dozens of significant rules that the EPA has begun to roll back during the past two years, and he made clear to lawmakers that he intended to continue the Trump administration’s reversal of environmental regulations.
“Through our deregulatory actions, the Trump administration has proven that burdensome federal regulations are not necessary to drive environmental progress,” Wheeler said at the time. “Certainty and the innovation that thrives in a climate of certainty are key to progress.” 

Despite the litany of rollbacks, the EPA under Wheeler also has rolled out initiatives aimed at reducing lead exposures around the country and providing oversight for a class of unregulated, long-lasting chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS, that pose serious health risks to millions of Americans. But the agency has yet to take definitive regulatory action on those proposals.

One Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, voted against Wheeler’s confirmation Thursday on the grounds that he had worked to water down federal rules curbing greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, as well as weaken fuel standards for the nation’s cars and pickup trucks.

“I believe that Mr. Wheeler, unlike Scott Pruitt, understands the mission of the EPA and acts in accordance with ethical standards; however, the policies he has supported as Acting Administrator are not in the best interest of our environment and public health, particularly given the threat of climate change to our nation,” Collins, who supported Wheeler’s confirmation as deputy EPA administrator last year, said in a statement.
While Democrats initially viewed Wheeler as a pragmatic technocrat with whom they could forge a handful of policy compromises, they expressed disappointment over key decisions he has made at the agency.

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After a protracted legal battle, NJ power plant ditches plan to convert to natural gas. Pipeline dead. Enviros rejoice

After nearly a decade of bitter fighting, RC Cape May Holdings raises white flag over proposal to build natural-gas pipeline in Pinelands

BL England

Credit: Wikipedia
BL England power plant
Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight
The plan to convert the BL England power plant to natural gas, one of the most controversial projects proposed in the Pinelands, is dead — at least for now.
RC Cape May Holdings, LLC has decided to withdraw its proposed plan to repower the unit, marking a huge victory for conservation groups that have waged a long battle to block the project, which they say undermines the core protections of the more than 1 million-acre preserve.
The proposed project, to convert a former coal-powered unit in northern Cape May County to natural gas, triggered one of the most contentious fights in recent years. Four former governors opposed building a pipeline to ship natural gas to the facility through 22 miles of the Pinelands.
The company notified the Appellate Division, where the case is under litigation, that it does not plan to repower the BL England facility, which used to include coal-fired plants in Upper Township.
The project, tied up in litigation for nine years, would have traversed 22 miles of the Pinelands, a 1 million-acre preserve set aside more than four decades ago.
“This is a huge victory for the Pinelands,’’ said Carleton Montgomery, executive director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, which had fought the project in court for years. “It was a terrible idea.’’

Opening the way to more natural gas?

The decision to abandon the repowering of the power plant, however, leaves open the question of whether natural-gas utilities will press regulatory officials to continue to approve pipelines in the state.
There is a movement in New Jersey to place a moratorium on new pipeline projects, as well as proposed natural-gas-fired power projects. Their argument is that such proposals do not fit in with the Murphy administration’s goals to have 100 percent of the state’s power come from clean-energy sources by 2050.
Montgomery argued the decision not to repower the plant will strengthen the Pinelands plan, a blueprint that came under attack during the Christie administration. His administration’s energy master plan promoted rapid expansion of the state’s natural-gas infrastructure, a policy they argued would lead to lower energy costs to consumers.
The Murphy administration is facing an outcry from environmental groups over its push to ban any new fossil-fuel projects. BL England was one of five power plants slated to be fired by natural gas; most other natural-gas pipeline projects have generated significant local opposition.
Environmentalists contend the projects should not move forward if the administration’s stated goals of having 50 percent of the state’s power produced by clean energy by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050, are to be met.

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