Planning a ‘post-Christie’ clean-energy agenda in NJ

Energy advocates are beginning to push for more renewable energy, looking into decoupling the power sector, and deploying charging stations for e-vehicles

Tom Johnson writes for NJ Spotlight:

With only a year left in Gov. Chris Christie’s term, lawmakers and clean-energy advocates will likely focus on promoting more ambitious policies for renewable energy over the next 12 months.
The emerging agenda, under discussion among stakeholders and Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, aims to lay the framework for overhauling the state’s energy policies when a new governor takes office a year from now.
Some of the issues, like ramping up the state’s reliance on solar and other types of renewable energy, have been kicking around the Legislature for a few years. Others, like dramatically changing the business model of the state’s gas and electric utilities, have been debated in the past, but have eluded compromises that satisfy both industry and consumers,
The Legislature also is expected to explore ways to develop energy-grid storage, a technology now recognized as crucial to expanding and making intermittent-power sources, such as wind and solar, more reliable and pervasive.
The objectives run counter to some of the policies embraced by the Christie administration and contrary to the energy policies anticipated to be advanced by President-elect Donald Trump. But proponents argue the efforts to fight climate change will likely be led by states over the next four years.
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Former NJ Attorney General David Samson is disbarred

Former NJ Attorney General David Samson disbarred
Bob Jordan reports for the Asbury Park Press:
Former Port Authority Chairman David Samson — defended by his close friend Gov. Chris Christie as an “extraordinary person’’ who “obviously had a lapse in judgment’’ — has received a federal court disbarment after admitting to bribing United Airlines to run the money-losing “chairman’s route’’ from Newark to an airport near his vacation home in South Carolina.
Samson was the state’s top government lawyer when he served as attorney general in 2002 and 2003.
PROFILE: David Samson
Samson, 77, also faces a likely sentence of probation to 24 months in prison, under federal guidelines. The Samson sentencing had been scheduled for later this week but has been adjourned to March 8.
Jerome B. Simandle, the chief federal judge serving in the District of New Jersey, issued an authorization that “disbarred and permanently restrained and enjoined (Samson) from the practice of law before this court.’’
The Dec. 21 order came a week after attorney Justin Walder, representing Samson, in a memo to the court said his client “voluntarily consents to his permanent suspension.’’
Walder did not respond to a request for comment Monday. 
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Preservation in Cape May NJ moving beyond farmland

Goshen Farm is part of Cape May County’s Farmland Preservation Program which preserves is use for farming

Jack Tomczuk reports for the Atlantic City Press:

    • J.P. Hand applied for Cape May County’s Farmland Preservation Program more than a decade ago to protect his 50-acre farm in Middle Township.
      “It takes away the urge for people to sell out to developers,” said Hand, who grows vegetables and raises chickens, ducks and horses on the farm. “You can leave it to your children or sell it, but it will always be farmland.”
      That’s because the county bought the development rights to Hand’s farm through the Open Space Trust Fund, which for more than 25 years has used a dedicated tax to preserve farmland and open space.
      Now, the mission of that fund has shifted to include projects such as spending $500,000 for an Ocean City skateboard park and, earlier this year, $800,000 for a vacant lot in Wildwood that officials are planning to convert into an outdoor event area that will host festivals, markets and concerts.
      In 1989, county voters approved by a 2-1 margin a ballot question that established the trust fund, which is paid for through a 1-cent tax per $100 of assessed property value. It received $4.76 million in taxpayer money in 2016.
      The trust expanded in 2013, going from just protecting farmland and open space to funding projects related to historic preservation and parks and recreation.
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New Pennsylvania Legislature to consider bills on gambling, property taxes and retirement benefits

Pennsylvania state Capitol in Harrisburg (Rebecca Droke photo)

Karen Langley reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania legislators return to the Capitol this week to start the new year with plenty of old business — and a fresh dose of political pressure — awaiting them.
There are no shortage of big-ticket issues. Lawmakers are likely to consider bills regulating and taxing online gambling, reducing or even eliminating property taxes and again trying to change the retirement benefits for future state and public school workers.
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And, as it has for successive years, the commonwealth’s billion-dollar budget woes will drive the agenda.
“This is going to be a difficult budget year,” said Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills. “I think we all know that.”
With majorities that will grow even larger with Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremonies, Republican legislative leaders, some of whom have hinted at running for governor, will be an even greater force for Gov. Tom Wolf to reckon with.
For the Democratic governor, it’s his last full year to make an impact before asking voters to reward him with a second term.
Lawmakers’ return on Tuesday will be brief. Votes on legislation aren’t expected right away, and after swearing-in day, they won’t reconvene in the Capitol until Jan. 23.
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Bayonne wind turbine’s repair cost still being negotiated

Jonathan Lin reports for The Jersey Journal:
Nine months after the city’s wind turbine underwent complicated repairs due to a broken bearing, the cost of those repairs is still being negotiated, an official said.
Bayonne Municipal Utilities Authority Executive Director Tim Boyle said on Friday that the MUA and its water contractor are still negotiating the cost with turbine manufacturer Leitner-Poma.
The MUA — which will be dissolved as an autonomous agency and become a division within the city Department of Public Works on Jan. 1 — originally estimated the total cost at $298,000.
But Boyle has noted that Leitner-Poma encountered difficulties during repairs on the 260-foot turbine at Oak and Fifth streets that later drove that estimate “skyward,” which in turn has prolonged negotiations.
“There’s been some movement toward resolving it,” Boyle told The Jersey Journal this week, adding that the MUA’s dissolution is not expected to impact cost negotiations.
The MUA official has previously stressed that the bearing that broke was supposed to last 20 years but only lasted three.
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What happens to the Department of Energy’s revolution?

An array of solar panels are seen in Oakland, Calif. (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

Chris Mooney reports for the Washington Post:
As the Obama administration prepares to leave office, it is seeking to underscore just how much has changed in the last eight years in the way we get energy — and to take some credit for it.
Since 2008, costs for wind and solar have plunged by 40 and 60 percent, respectively, according to an analysis provided by the Energy Department. That’s even as the United States has installed 100 gigawatts, or billion watts, of generating capacity in the two technologies combined (75 gigawatts of wind, 25 of solar).
Meanwhile, we now have 500,000 electric vehicles on the road, thanks largely to a 70 percent drop in battery costs. The federal government can’t take credit for all of this (industry invested too, states also promoted renewable energy, and so on), but it helped drive much of it through research investments over decades, said David Friedman, the Energy Department’s acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
“The Department of Energy has really changed the world when it comes to energy, and that’s part of a global competition that’s underway,” said Friedman. 
“Electric vehicles, we can take very I think direct credit for the lithium ion battery of today,” Friedman added. “That core chemistry…was developed and improved at Argonne National Labs through DOE funding.”
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One question asked, “If DOE’s topline budget … were required to be reduced 10% over the next four fiscal years [does] the Department have any recommendations as to where those reductions should be made?”

Another asked, “What is the Department’s role with respect to the development of offshore wind?” This technology, the next step for ramping up wind energy in the United States, is finally arriving in this country at a time when the next president has been particularly critical of offshore wind farms, having battled them in Scotland.
The U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, in Rhode Island, just became operational last week and in a massive auction, the Norway-based oil major Statoil set a new record by laying down nearly $ 42.5 million on a bid for a huge offshore area off the coast of New York. It was “the highest bid ever for a U.S. offshore wind energy area,” according to the American Wind Energy Association.
“We believe that the area that we have now leased…has the potential to develop more than 1 gigawatt of offshore wind, which is a sizable offshore wind park,” said Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s executive vice president for New Energy Solutions. “The biggest ones in Europe are about that size.”
While this type of slow greening of the U.S. energy system should continue no matter who is president, it’s less clear if the clean energy research investments that Friedman hails will remain a priority at the federal level — or if, instead, countries like China and Germany will take the next steps. (The Energy Department invested $ 2.4 billion in wind energy technology research from 1976 through 2014.)
Under Trump, the Department of Energy is set to be run by former Texas Republican governor Rick Perry, who once argued that the department shouldn’t exist — and yet is credited with a wind industry expansion in Texas on his watch. Still, there are fears that his nomination suggests a realignment of department priorities towards fossil fuels and away from renewables.
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