Scott Fallon reports for the North Jersey Record:
Gov. Phil Murphy will not be able to make his ambitious clean energy goals if he fails to stop 12 fossil fuel projects from moving forward, according to a report issued Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups.
Advocates say four proposed power plants along with eight pipelines and other natural gas infrastructure would increase New Jersey’s greenhouse gas output by 30 percent and would derail Murphy’s efforts to power the state by renewable energy by mid-century.
“You can’t get to 100 percent renewable by 2050 by building more power plants and pipelines,” said Amy Goldsmith, state director of Clean Water Action. “You can’t build a single one of these projects and hope to achieve these goals.”
PSE&G’s Bergen Generating Station – one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases in New Jersey. (Photo11: File photo)
Among the projects are a power plant in the Meadowlands to produce electricity to New York, two pipelines through the protected Pinelands, a pipeline under Raritan Bay and New York Harbor to Queens and a pipeline from Pennsylvania through Central Jersey.
A full list and descriptions are below.
Those projects continue a decades-long trend in New Jersey, which saw pipelines and other infrastructure built to move an abundant supply of gas fracked in northern Pennsylvania to a large swath of customers in the Northeast.
Murphy inherited almost all of these projects from the pro-fossil-fuel Christie administration. But Murphy came into office last year championing an environmental agenda to transition New Jersey’s energy production to wind and solar power.
Construction of the Tennessee Gas pipeline through the protected New Jersey Highlands in 2013. The pipeline was built to allow more natural gas fracked from northern Pennsylvania to reach customers in the Northeast and elsewhere. (Photo11: THOMAS E. FRANKLIN/THE RECORD)
Alexandra Altman, a Murphy spokeswoman, said the governor “has directed his team to take a hard look at energy infrastructure projects as part of an updated Energy Master Plan, which will focus on renewable energy and shift away from outdated energy sources.”
Over the past year, Murphy has made moves to reduce the state’s contribution to global warming by rejoining a regional cap and trade system and laying the groundwork to build one of the nation’s largest offshore wind farms – a project that has been stalled for at least a decade.
His aggressive clean energy mandate requires 50 percent of all electricity sold in the state to come from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.
But advocates say his efforts will be in vain unless he takes a strong stand against the natural gas industry, which generated 58 percent of electricity in New Jersey as of October. Only 3.5 percent came from renewable sources. 
Opponents of the Penn East pipeline have objected to the federal government’s review process of the proposal. (Photo11: ~File)
The four power plants plus a recently completed PSEG plant in Woodbridge would spike carbon dioxide and methane emissions from New Jersey’s power plants by 76 percent, according to the report.
“It’s kind of scary that no one until now has done the basic math around these cumulative impacts or shared it,” said Ken Dolsky of the Don’t Gas the Meadowlands Coalition and a primary author of the report. “Our research shows building these gas projects would make it impossible to achieve Governor Murphy’s objectives.”
Dolsky and other members of a coalition called Empower New Jersey held a rally in Trenton on Wednesday calling for Murphy to pass a moratorium to halt progress on the dozen projects.
