Two New Jersey utilities making headlines today

Tom Johnson reports on both the South Jersey Gas and PSE&G announcements in NJ Spotlight: 


New South Jersey Gas

For the second time since 2004, Elizabethtown Gas, the utility once owned by the Kean family, is getting a new owner.
South Jersey Industries, the owner of South Jersey Gas, has agreed to buy the New Jersey utility, along with Elkton Gas, a small Maryland utility, from the Southern Co. in a $1.7 billion deal.
The acquisition, if approved by regulators, will make the Folsom-based energy company the second-largest gas provider in New Jersey with 675,000 customers. Elizabethtown, founded in 1855, has 288,000 customers in central and north Jersey.
The deal makes sense in that SJI is based in the state and has enjoyed a good relationship with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. Southern is based in Atlanta and only acquired Elizabethtown a year ago when it purchased its owner AGL Resources.

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“The acquisition of Elizabethtown Gas and Elkton Gas is a great fit for SJI and reinforces our commitment to high quality, regulated earnings growth,’’ said Michael Renna, president and CEO of SJI. “We share the same business model and are committed to the highest standards of safety, reliability, and environmental stewardship.’’
“It makes more sense for SJI to own Elizabethtown,’’ said Paul Paterson, an energy analyst for Glenrock Associates in New York City. “It probably brings more value to a company already based in the state.’’
Under the terms of the transaction, SJI is acquiring both companies for a total consideration of $1.7 billion, with an effective purchase price of $1.4 billion after taking into consideration the present value of tax benefits associated with the deal.

Public Service Electric & Gas gets green light for 3 new transmission projects

Public Service Electric & Gas yesterday got the go-ahead for three transmission projects totaling more than $200 million in new investments.

The projects were part of $1 billion worth of transmission-related upgrades approved by PJM Interconnection, which oversees the nation’s largest power grid serving more than 65 million people from the Eastern Seaboard to Illinois.
For PSE&G, the projects are the latest part of a huge investment planned by the state’s largest utility to upgrade and modernize the electric grid serving nearly 2 million customers.
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“The projects PJM approved today will strengthen the transmission grid by upgrading equipment and constructing lines between our stations to improve our network and maintain reliability for our customers,’’ said Isabel Goncalves-Rooney, project director.
The largest project will involve the investment of $197 million in Union County to upgrade existing substations in Springfield and Union and build a new 11-mile, 69-kilovolt line between Front Street and Stanley Terrace.
The other two projects also call for construction of 69-kilovolt lines between Hasbrouck Heights and Carlstadt (five miles) and Hilltop and Woodbury (15 miles). The respective costs are $21 million and $98 million.
The projects are the latest of more than $12 billion in investments planned by the utility between now and 2020, most of which will be spent on transmission and distribution upgrades.
The cost of the latest three projects will be factored into the price of electricity set in an annual auction held by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities next February, according to Karen Johnson, a spokeswoman for PSE&G.

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Midtown Manhattan might soon be coal country

Robin Eves of Clean Coal Technologies Inc.

POWERING UP Eves says the time for his firm’s cleaner-coal technology has finally arrived.
Matthew Flamm writes for Crain’s:
Madison Avenue may
seem like an unlikely home
for a coal company. But in recent months energy

executives from as far afield as Wyoming, China,
India and Russia have
been visiting the Midtown
office of Clean Coal Technologies Inc. to
discuss
the firm’s methods for making dirty coal a more
efficient fuel.


Founded in 2007
through a merger with another
coal technology company, CCTI once traded at
more
than $70 a share when speculators thought
clean-coal technology would soon
come to fruition.
It is now a penny stock, has no revenue and has
just two
full-time employees: a chief executive
and a chief financial officer.

But it does have
patents. The company’s technology can remove sulfur, moisture, hydrocarbons and
other volatile matter from coal, allowing it to burn hotter and more
efficiently.

CCTI started in
Florida, but in 2010 its CEO, Robin Eves, relocated to a shared space on
Madison Avenue to be closer to investors and leverage the city’s status as an international
crossroads.

The strategy worked.
Coal companies from India and Indonesia have since invested more than $6M,
allowing CCTI to begin building a test plant in Oklahoma. Denver-based



Black Diamond Holdings
and other investors, including
a large Manhattan-based fund, have added $9
million
since 2015.
Read the full story

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Judge refuses to dismiss case against NJ Sen. Menendez

Senator Bob Menendez arrives at courthouse with his daughter and son (AP photo)

David Porter writes for the Associated Press:

The judge at Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial refused to throw out any of the charges against the New Jersey Democrat on Monday in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling narrowing the definition of bribery.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Williams Walls was a major defeat for Menendez and a huge victory for prosecutors, who warned that dismissing the charges would torpedo nearly all other bribery cases and open the door wide to graft.
Walls rejected defense lawyers’ arguments that the allegations against Menendez didn’t meet the new, narrower definition of bribery under a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that reversed the conviction of Republican former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia.
In recent months, the McDonnell ruling led judges to throw out bribery convictions of at least three other former public officials, including a Pennsylvania congressman.
Federal prosecutors in the Menendez trial rested their case last week. The defense will now begin presenting its case.
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Can Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal Survive Its Renaissance?
























Brooklyn’s famously filthy canal is getting cleaned up. A building boom is coming. And not everyone is happy.


Andy Newman reports in The New York Times:

“Welcome to Venice Jerko.” The greeting is painted in three-foot-high letters on a brick wall along Brooklyn’s legendarily polluted Gowanus Canal, right across from the canal’s first luxury high-rise and its new waterfront promenade.

One recent sunny Sunday, a party of German seminary students and a pair of hotel publicists gathered for a canoe tour. The seminarians had read about the canal in a German travel guide that promised “a romantic sunset on the water.” The publicists were scouting to see if the boutique hotel, opening a few blocks away, might want to include guided canoe trips.

“It could make for a great guest experience,” one of the publicists said. The voyagers carried their canoes past the cafe tables on the promenade, put in below the new boat ramp and paddled off.

The future is flowing in fast on the sleepy little canal, where the wilderness of urban decay that sprouted artists and then artisanal ice cream shops is being tidied and tamed. Stroller traffic on the bridge to Whole Foods grows thick, and the sliding crunch of the concrete factory conveyor belt is falling silent.

But as much as the canal zone has been remade already, the next few years promise, or threaten, a different magnitude of change altogether.


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Bear hunt in New Jersey nets 241 kills by Saturday night

Michael Izzo and Matt Kadosh report for NorthJersey.com

Hunters had killed 52 bears by 9 p.m. Saturday night, bringing the number of bears harvested on the sixth day of New Jersey’s bear hunt to 241, a Fish and Wildlife spokesman said.

With the potential for hunters to drag more kills from the forest overnight, final figures would be posted on the state Department of Environmental Protection’s website by 8 a.m., said a spokesman, Robert Geist.

While the figures marked a significant decrease from the 562 killed during last year’s hunt, an animal rights activist told a reporter the numbers don’t matter.

“The senseless slaughter of young cubs and yearlings and moms for trophies, mounts and rugs,” said Angi Metler, director of the Bear Education and Resource Group. “That’s what this hunt is about. Don’t kid yourself. It’s not about numbers.”

Bill Crain, another activist, knew he would be arrested Saturday morning when he left the designated protest zone at the Whittingham Wildlife Management Area. It wasn’t the first time he left a bear hunt protest in handcuffs.

An animal rights activist and professor at the City College of New York, Crain spent a week in jail this January after protesting last December’s bear hunt in the state.

“I was in jail eight days the last time I did this,” Crain said. “This would be the eighth time so it will probably be more.”

With a sign that read “Mother Nature is Crying” hanging from his neck, Carin crossed the street and walked toward the bear check-in station, where he was stopped by New Jersey State Police and Conservation Police, handcuffed, and placed in a trooper’s car.

Read the full story


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China automakers cranking out E-vehicles; Big Oil effect?

                                                                                                 Credit: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images   
Rob Dieterich reports for Inside Climate News:
China is the world’s biggest car market, and its government has become the world’s biggest booster of electric vehicles. Those two facts go a long way toward explaining the urgency with which global automakers are rolling out electrification plans, The New York Times reports.
Beijing policymakers have a range of motivations for their electric auto embrace, from smog-choked cities to a dependence on imported oil. They also see the possibility of an expanded role for Chinese firms in a reimagined auto industry. Global automakers see a role for themselves in China’s huge auto market, which is all the motivation they need. The Times story is here.
 
India, meanwhile, has committed to a 2030 deadline to end the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines, but the country lags far behind China. In its biggest move to date, the government last month agreed to purchase 10,000 electric vehicles from Tata Motors.
Bloomberg points out, as evidence of the scale of the challenge India faces, that Tata doesn’t yet have a commercially available electric car. There were just 350 charging stations in India versus 215,000 in China at the end of last year, according to the Bloomberg story, here.
 
With the spread of electric vehicles, a related question arises: How soon might global demand for oil begin to decline? Barclays research says an EV boom and increases in fuel efficiency could cut global oil needs in 2025 by an amount nearly equal to the output of Iran.
And if electric vehicles capture a third of the global market by 2040, the lost demand would nearly equal all of Saudi Arabia’s production. InsideClimate News has the whole story, here.
 

KEY STAT: An estimated 814,000 electric vehicles will be sold in China in 2019, and 602,000 in the rest of the world, according to a forecast from LMC Automotive.


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