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Contrary To Science, Gov. Murphy Sees No Climate Emergency

Huge Gap Between Press Release Rhetoric and Regulatory Reality Grows

NJ Spotlight coverage regurgitates fact free corporate talking points

You will not see a graph like this in the Murphy BPU Energy Master Plan or DEP Greenhouse Gas Inventory Reports

This is Part One of a series.

The ink was barely dry on Gov. Murphy’s Executive Order on climate before his DEP began running away from it.

Because I’ve been advocating for and writing about the failure of DEP to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and adopt rules necessary to adapt to climate change for over a decade, of course I’d been planning to write about NJ Gov. Murphy’s Executive Order #100, which directs DEP to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and incorporate climate adaptation in regulatory programs, and DEP Commissioner McCabe’s Administrative Order No. 2020-01.

Keep in mind that, way back on October 7, 2007, in a Sunday Star Ledger Op-Ed (see: “No Teeth in “Tough” Pollution Law” – sorry no link), while everybody – and I mean everybody – was cheerleading, we alone correctly called bullshit on the highly touted Global Warming Response Act. Our criticisms have been vindicated by history.

In fact, my previous post on Feb. 5 that was critical of Gov. Murphy’s Energy Master Plan’s approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings – closed with this commitment:

We’ll be doing additional posts on the EMP as well as the Governor’s Executive Order and the DEP Commissioner’s Administrative Order.

This will take several posts – the Gov. has crafted a bizarrely complex byzantine bureaucratic exercise that requires cross-walks between four EO’s, DEP’s AO, IEP, EMP, DEP, BPU, DCA RGGI, & 3 recent energy laws – but let’s start today with the media coverage.

Just 2 days after I promised to write about DEP regulation, NJ Spotlight – the media outlet where “issues [used to] matter” more than Foundation funding and corporate advertising – weighed in with this openly hostile and incredibly biased spin (it actually gets worse after the headline):

• Business Leaders Fear Climate-Change Regulations Will Add to Costs, Stunt Growth

As I’ve noted, this is another troubling story in what is now an obvious pattern in false framing, biased content, and reliance on highly questionable sources. A pattern I’ve called “journalistic malpractice” (note that “green” sources in NJ Spotlight stories are almost always the same groups funded by the same elite Foundations that also fund NJ Spotlight, i.e. Wm. Penn & Dodge Foundations and The Fund for NJ. That pattern is strong evidence of how elite Foundations abuse the public interest in how they:

1. define or hijack the policy agenda;

2. fund and co-opt “safe” “moderate” environmental groups to conduct “campaigns” on that agenda. Those campaigns are designed not to threaten existing corporate or political power;

3. Foundations then fund the media outlets to publicize that agenda; and

4. the media outlets then source stories on agenda issues with quotes from the Foundation funded groups or name them as Roundtable panelist and faux “experts”.

It’s one big self serving scam, reflecting Neoliberal ideology – a dynamic that others have called an “Elite Charade”. I call this “news management“. Ironically, when the right wing adopts similar tactics, it’s correctly denounced as disinformation, propaganda, an “echo chamber”, or “vast conspiracy”.)

While NJ Spotlight has published scores of stories, Op-Ed’s, “sponsored content” and held several issue “Roundtables” that focus almost exclusively on the alleged “high cost” of climate programs – from energy efficiency to renewable energy – stories that quote various corporate hacks, I can count on one hand the number of stories NJ Spotlight has published about the most recent IPCC “Special Report” and dire warnings from scientists that we have about a decade to act to deeply reduce GHG emissions to avoid irreversible and potentially catastrophic impacts:

The [IPCC] report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.

Ironically, while Gov. Murphy’s own Executive Order repeatedly cites the IPCC’s science, amazingly, it somehow ignores the policy implications of the IPCC warnings, i.e. a “rapid” 45% emissions reduction by 2030.

As we’ve written, Gov. Murphy’s Energy Master Plan assumes that GHG emissions will continue to grow and that significant emissions reductions will not BEGIN until after 2030. Just LOOK:

Now, after the huge embarrassment of a 2 year energy planning process at BPU being made obsolete by the climate science, the Gov. has issued an Executive Order mandating climate regulations by DEP (read the Murphy press release).

Given that embarrassing BPU experience – and the dire warnings of science – one would think that the Gov. would have learned the lesson of delay.

One would be wrong: The Gov. Executive Order shows no sign of urgency and gives DEP two more years to adopt regulations (which would then take several more years to implement and enforce).

In contrast to that two year delay, Gov. Murphy could have declared a climate emergency in his Executive Order, invoking the Governor’s constitutional emergency powers. An emergency declaration would have had multiple benefits:

1) it would have reflected the science and aggressive timetables to produce real & deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions;

2) it would have enabled issuance of a moratorium on DEP and BPU approvals of  “more than a dozen” pending fossil infrastructure projects;

3) it would have authorized DEP to adopt regulations (effective on publication in the NJ Register) without going through the lengthy procedural requirements of Gov. Murphy’s own Executive Order and the NJ Administrative Procedures Act (see NJAC 1:30-6.5 Emergency rule adoption and concurrent proposal). Emergency rulemaking that provides streamlined regularly adoption prior to notice and comment also maximizes the role of science and the control of DEP experts, while minimizing political intervention in rule development by corporate economic interests;

4) it would have bolstered the validity and legal defensibility of any DEP regulations which are almost certain to prompt litigation; and

5) it would have sent a strong message about priorities and educated the public about the climate emergency.

But instead of a moratorium on new fossil infrastructure enforced via DEP regulations, the Gov. has opted for putting BPU in charge of more delay.

And get this: with respect to infrastructure, the BPU will not be evaluating a moratorium on infrastructure and the attainment of any 45% reduction in existing emissions by 2030. Instead, BPU will consider “the need for future expansion”!. Here’s the relevant text of the Murphy EMP:(@ page 189)

More process. More delay. While GHG emissions continue to increase. Pending “dozen” fossil infrastructure projects may receive regulatory approvals during at least 2 year period of delay due to BPU planning and DEP regulatory development. Ta da!

In addition to failing to declare an emergency and establish a moratorium on regulatory approvals of new fossil infrastructure, the Gov.’s Executive Order failed to direct his Department of Community Affairs to update building codes to reduce GHG emissions.

But, before I delve further into the weeds and wonking on the substance of the Gov.’s EO and DEP’s AO – which I will do in subsequent posts – let’s get back to the media coverage, and responses by DEP and environmental cheerleaders.

As previously noted, NJ Spotlight chose to ignore science and law and write its first story about DEP regulations from the business community’s perspective (as if the NJ Chamber of Commerce and the NJ Business and Industry Association lacked an effective voice in Trenton).

Of course, the business community savaged the idea of DEP regulation and invoked the same old tired spin and lies about alleged devastating impacts on jobs and economic growth.

One would think that professional journalists would be skeptical of all that jive. Again, one would be wrong.

So, how did the Murphy DEP respond? Diid they push back? Did they invoke science?

Nope.

They put their tail between their legs and ran, by recycling almost verbatim the slogans and mantras that date to the 1990’s Whitman “Open For Business” DEP: (Does anyone still recall Whitman’s “Green and Gold” slogan?)

“We’re at the beginning of the next chapter, and we’re inviting the business community to come with us in writing the next chapter,” LaTourette said in an interview with NJ Spotlight. “We’re going to be with them shoulder to shoulder,  just like we are with local governments and our partners in the advocacy community because we are really all in this together.” …

The regulations that will come out of the new process will be as much about economic vitality as about environmental protection, LaTourette said. “We don’t believe in that false dichotomy that you can have a clean environment or economic development — those two things go hand in hand.”

Jane Cohen, a senior adviser to Murphy on environmental affairs, also said the EMP process included economic development.

“The Governor has been very clear that part of what he is looking at when formulating his policies around addressing climate change are exactly around economic development,” she said. “He really wants to support economic development through clean-energy policies.”

Translation:

1. Economic growth and corporate profits are equal to or a greater priority than climate science and avoiding climate catastrophe.

2. The business community literally will be involved in drafting the regulations, i.e. “in writing the next chapter”.

This is the case because Gov. Murphy’s Executive Order on regulatory policy reinforced the Christie Executive Order #2 rulemaking process provisions, in terms of involving the business stakeholders early on in rule drafting prior to rule proposal. 

3. The DEP point person on this critical regulatory initiative, DEP Chief of Staff Shawn Latourette, is a former corporate lawyer.

Scroll down and review his professional experience and publications.

I was particularly impressed with this piece, which he wrote while still in Rutgers Law School – while located in a major petro-chemical state, at a time when DEP had just launched a new major Natural Resource Damage (NRD) enforcement program on toxic polluters. The piece amounts to a transparent flashing Bright Red Neon Sign solicitation that literally says to corporate polluters: “Hire me, I’ll help you get off the hook from punitive pollution damages and enforcement penalties”

• Run Agroud Again: The Exxon Valdez’s Collision With the Supreme Court’s Punitive Damages Jurisprudence

The colloquial phrase the “red light district” as a zone of prostitution has a factual basis – the whores would light red lamps in their windows to signal availability.

Mr. Latourette, via that “Exxon Valdez” publication, lit a bright red light in his legal window.

4. Former Wall Street Goldman Sachs man Gov. Murphy is sending a message to the business community: don’t worry, I’ve got DEP on a short leash and my office is directly involved, so any DEP rules will be more of the same: big on rhetoric, small on substance.

5. DEP views climate polluters as “partners” – not the arms length regulated community – with the same legitimacy, access, and influence as their environmental friends. This effectively maintains continuity with the “customer friendly” policies of the Christie DEP.

Finally, we close today’s post by a brief look at the “response” of the environmental community.

We note that predictably, sycophant and Green Cannibal Ed Potasnak (NJ LCV), who politically endorsed and funded Gov. Murphy’s campaign and has lied and spun to provide political cover for the Gov., was quoted in Gov. Murphy’s press release. 

So were incompetent boot lickers Tom Gilbert (Rethink NJ/NJCF) and Amy Goldsmith (who endorsed Chris Christie in 2009).

Amy Goldsmith was a member of the Empower NJ Coalition. That Coalition was demanding and waged a two year campaign seeking a moratorium on new fossil infrastructure. How the hell could she sell them out by publicly supporting and praising Gov. Murphy’s plans – in the Gov.’s press release – a policy and plan that destroys the concept of a moratorium?

The only surprise was Doug O’Malley of Environment NJ, whose recent actions on EV legislation, RGGI, the Delaware River, and lead in drinking water, among others, demonstrate that he’s joined the Green Cannibals and gone all in for the Foundation funding and NJ Spotlight panels that political sycophancy delivers.

Of course NJ Spotlight – funded by the same elite Foundations that fund the Green Cannibals and sycophants – quoted these fools in their coverage and ignored critics.

Over the last several weeks, aware that the Gov. would soon be releasing the Energy Master Plan and likely announcing a DEP climate strategy, I posted several times to set the expectations, policy framework, and to warn people of the abuses that were likely to occur.

I focused on 3 important things:

1) the media coverage:

• NJ Spotlight Is Becoming The Fox News Of Energy & Climate Reporting

2) the complete corruption and co-optation of the environmental community:

• The Green Cannibals Roaming In Trenton Do Enormous Damage

3) there is a huge gap between the Gov.’ climate rhetoric and the policy and regulatory content:

• Murphy DEP Rules Exclude Climate Change In Infrastructure Planning
• Highly Touted “Transformative” Electric Vehicle Program Has Negligible – If ANY – Impact On Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• NY Times Coverage of Building Electrification Should Spur Scrutiny Of NJ Gov. Murphy’s Energy Master Plan

We warned you. And we predicted the current outcome.

So, once again, just like we called bullshit on the Global Warming Response Act over 12 years ago, we must call BS on Gov. Murphy.

Stay tuned for next installments, where we analyze the content of the Gov.’s Executive Order and the DEP Administrative Order.

Murphy Energy Plan Vague – Postpones New Building Codes Until 2030

We are in a climate emergency and face existential risks. You don’t ask how much the fire engine costs when the house is burning down. The IPCC scientists recently warned we have about a decade to make deep reductions.

Calling it a “Movement”, the NY Times ran an important story today on proliferating efforts by local governments to adopt new building codes to mandate electrification of buildings as a key climate strategy to decarbonize the economy, see:

• ‘All-Electric’ Movement Picks Up Speed, Catching Some Off Guard – As cities across the nation embrace electric power as a cleaner alternative to natural gas, developers are scrambling to keep up.

They say that the NY Times sets the agenda, so let’s hope that NJ media follows the lead of the Gray Lady and does some in depth substantive reporting on the building sector policies of the highly touted NJ Gov. Murphy Energy Master Plan (EMP).

In this post, we’ll guide reporters and readers to where to find the skeletons.

The Murphy Board of Public Utility’s Integrated Energy Plan (IEP) is the technical (quantitative, modeled) basis for the BPU’s Energy Master Plan (EMP).

So, in order to tease out the substantive reality behind the rhetorical facade, we must engage in a careful dance between the IEP’s quantitative modeled future energy and emissions “scenarios” and the policy rhetoric of the Energy Master Plan (EMP). These IEP “scenarios” reveal major weaknesses in what are often vague and non-committal policy statements in the EMP.

The first place to look – which provides smoking gun data that exposes the language and spin of the EMP – may be found a document known as the “Integrated Energy Plan” (IEP) (Nov. 2019 webinar summary). Here’s Gov. Murphy’s Office on the role about the IEP:

• The Integrated Energy Plan (IEP) will identify the most economically beneficial and least-cost pathways to achieve state goals
• The modeling analysis will help to prioritize the timing, pace, and scale of achieving our objectives

The “final scenarios” of the IEP on page 14 are revealing (you may need to hit the link to the document, because the print below is very small):

Look at the “least cost” plan (the 3rd column from the left) – which is the preferred plan and basis for the Murphy EMP – and down to the third row, “Building Electrification”.

You will note the following key goals and timetables:

• Building retrofits – 90% by 2050 – rapid adoption in 2030
• Delivered Fuels – Transition to electric starting in 2030

Did you get that?

If you didn’t get it, here’s more specific language from the EMP, that specifically cross -walks the IEP modeled scenarios with the EMP policies:

.. the [IEP] scenarios assumed that buildings BEGAN to be retrofitted and electrified aggressively STARTING in 2030, so that 90% of building water and space heating was powered by electricity in 2050.” Murphy Energy Master Plan, @ p.159

So let’s repeat: While the NY Times writes about cities across the country who have already adopted building codes to mandate electrification, the Murphy Energy Master Plan is assuming that those building codes will not be adopted and implemented and will have no impact on greenhouse gas emissions for over a decade, until after 2030.

Cliche: too little, too late.

Now let’s compare  the IEP’s modeled “scenarios” regarding building electrification with the relevant data and policy text of the EMP.

According to the EMP, buildings are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions:

Here are the relevant goals and strategies from the EMP –

As you consider them, ask “who, what, when and how” on each of these EMP goals and strategies.

Be sure to keep the 2030 and 2050 numeric goals and timetables of the IEP on electrification of buildings in mind that I just highlighted above.

First note that the EMP does not specify or make time bound commitments to adopting enforceable regulatory building codes that are highlighted in the NY Times story.

Then note that the EMP uses evasive and “flexible” weasel words – which lack quantification and deadlines and specific administrative implementation tools and bureaucratic responsibilities –  terms like “strengthen”, “advocate for”, “establish”, “mechanisms” (which are distinguished from “regulations”), “start”, “develop”:

• 3.3  Strengthen building and energy codes and appliance standards

  3.3.1  Advocate for net zero carbon buildings in new construction in the upcoming 2024 International Code Council code change hearings

  3.3.3  Establish mechanisms to increase building effciency (sic) in existing buildings

  4.1  Start the transition for new construction to be net zero carbon

  Goal 4.1.4: Study and develop mechanisms and regulations to support net zero carbon new construction.

  4.1.5  Develop electric vehicle-ready and demand response-ready building codes for new multi-unit dwellings and commercial construction

Once Again, Green Cannibals Selfishly Ignore Climate and Social Justice

State Land Use Planning and Regulation Ignored – Market Trends Celebrated

We Call Bullshit On NJ Spotlight’s Coverage

I question whether that “market demand” is exclusively voluntary and all good, or whether it is significantly influenced by things like a precarious job market (low paying dead end jobs with no benefits), heavy student debt burdens, unaffordable healthcare, gentrification and rising housing costs, and the fact that young people are facing a deeply uncertain and terrifying future of climate catastrophe.

New Jersey’s previously perennially controversial issues of land use and sprawl have fallen off the media and policy radar and environmental group agenda’s for over a decade now. The Foundation funding for “sprawl” campaigns has dried up.

The State Planning Commission has been invisible and turned into an economic development cheerleader, after seemingly abandoning the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.

Meanwhile, the Christie and Murphy administrations not only have ignored the State Plan, but the land use planning and regulatory work of the Pinelands Commission, Highlands Council and DEP.

The Christie administration turned the Pinelands Commission into a rubber stamp for pipelines. They killed an attempt to create a Coastal Commission.

The Highlands Council became a political patronage pit.

The “customer service” & “culture change”  Christie DEP Commissioner Bob Martin rolled back DEP’s Highlands and land use regulations under the guise of “regulatory alignment” and reducing “regulatory burdens” and “red tape”.

The Murphy administration basically pursued a policy of “continuity” with Christie, but shifted the focus to climate and energy issues (and from DEP & regulations to BPU & the Energy Master Plan). The media and environmental groups followed along, while the academic community went underground, with the exception of sea level rise and coastal land use issues, where they were forced to engage.

But even with that engagement, the land use issues were presented narrowly and framed in terms of either voluntary local actions (not State planning and regulation), “design” competitions (not regional planning), or feel good individual, site specific and ineffective “sustainable development” and “climate resilience” projects. All this was done while the regulatory status quo, a policy of “rebuild madness”, and beach replenishment and traditional coastal engineering solutions remained unchanged (with the exception of the Murphy DEP rollback of DEP flood regulations, a move that was blasted by FEMA).

We tried to keep the focus on land use and climate, exposing the Christie “rebuild madness”, e.g. see:

• Christie Abdication: DEP Commissioner Martin Waives Rules for Rebuilding Wiped Out Infrastructure
• Rutgers Sea Level Rise Maps Being Ignored by DEP
• Legislators Go All in With Gov. Christie On Sandy Rebuild Madness
• “Strategic Adjustment” – Or Rebuild Madness?
• The Deafness Before the Storm
• Memo to Gov. Christie: Sea Walls and Engineering Don’t Work

So, after a decade of this bi-partisan, media, and environmental group neglect, I was pleasantly surprised to read the headline of today’s “good news” story by NJ Spotlight:

• We’re Losing Less Land to Development in NJ, and Slowing Loss of Natural Areas

But, I was extremely disappointed upon reading the story.

Here’s the problem:

Hasse attributed the shift in part to declining demand from young people for the traditional suburban living environments favored by their parents. Many people in their 20s and 30s want to live in dense, walkable communities rather than in car-dependent subdivisions, and the trend has resulted in fewer suburban homes being built, he said.

“Twenty-somethings don’t want to be, and can’t afford to be, in a house in the suburbs. They are all flocking back to Philadelphia, Jersey City, New Brunswick,” he said.

I don’t doubt that “twenty-somethings” prefer urban to suburban living.

But I question whether that “market demand” is exclusively voluntary and all good, or whether it is significantly influenced by things like a precarious job market (low paying dead end jobs with no benefits), heavy student debt burdens, unaffordable healthcare, gentrification and rising housing costs, and the fact that young people are facing a deeply uncertain and terrifying future of climate catastrophe.

Is the location of all that “demand” in distressed urban designated EJ communities? It is serving existing urban residents or displacing them by gentrification? Is the new housing affordable and served by public transit? Or is it expensive and car dependent? Is is powered by renewable energy and net zero in carbon emissions?

So, we need to look behind the superficial “market trends” to find out what is really going on.

But, aside from the story’s reliance on “market fundamentalism” as the sole causal mechanism, it is technically misleading to rely so heavily on local Certificate of Occupancy data and to compare 3 years of land use data with a 29 year trend.

Technical flaws and the exclusive focus on market trends and demography ignore important issues and masks huge problems (outlined below).

Additionally, the story makes this unsubstantiated, fact free, and misleading claim:

The shift has also been driven by New Jersey’s conservation movement, led by state initiatives such as the Garden State Preservation Trust, and private nonprofits like the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, which together have shielded many lands from development, Hasse said.

For example, preservationists used the 2008-2009 recession as an opportunity to persuade farmers who were unable to sell their land to developers to agree instead to conservation easements — agreements between landowners and government agencies or private conservation groups that typically prevent future real estate development, thus permanently preserving the land as farmland.

This statement greatly exaggerates – without evidence, in the form of data or maps – the role of land preservation in any shift in land use patterns, while ignoring many other important causal factors. (And, as we’ve written, this is not the first time that NJ Spotlight has written a highly misleading story that celebrates “market forces” and ignores or even denigrates the role of planning and regulation. At some point, the bias becomes ideological – i.e. a Neoliberal attack –  and must be called out – even if it gets you banned there.)

And there is no political data or analysis that would in any way justify describing this conservation program as a “movement”. Just the opposite: the Green Cannibals are anti-democratic, foundation funded, elite groups with tiny memberships who operate privately behind the scenes, often in self dealing ways. Give me a break! (reminds me of Pete Buttigieg calling his campaign a “movement”):

as Aldous Huxley wrote in the introduction to his classic novel of dystopian technocracy, Brave New World, “the greatest triumphs of propaganda” are accomplished by maintaining “silence about truth.”

The Garden State Preservation Trust and private land conservation efforts have serious limitations and flaws, including the fact that they are based on opportunistic private transactions, and are market based, voluntary, and driven by willing sellers. Accordingly, it is no surprise that they are scattershot. (Note that readers were not provided a map of those lands).

The lands preserved are not based on science, natural resources values, or any overarching land use plan or strategy.

Equally – as I’ve written many times – the program is unfair to urban NJ and disproportionately impacted low income and minority communities, and biased towards protecting the back yards of economically and politically powerful people, land speculators, developers, and corporations.

The land preservation program also has unintended effects, including exacerbating gentrification and it also has been used by affluent all white communities for exclusionary and discriminatory purposes.

Here’s a note I sent to the Spotlight reporter and editor, which outlines other major policy concerns that are ignored or masked by today’s story:

1. Do you realize that your story today included a chart -which drove the narrative – that misleading side by side  compares land use data over a 3 year period with the same data set over a 29 year period? That is incredibly misleading. I strongly urge you to correct it.

2. If redevelopment is all good, are you aware that the climate, anti-corporate subsidy, and environmental justice champion NJ Gov. Murphy just quietly signed legislation that promotes and subsidizes redevelopment and IGNORES climate change & EJ? See:

• Gov. Murphy Quietly Signs Major Redevelopment Law – No Standards To Address Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy & Environmental Justice

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2019/08/gov-murphy-quietly-signs-major-redevelopment-law-no-standards-to-address-greenhouse-gas-emissions-energy-efficiency-renewable-energy-environmental-justice-2/

3. Gentrification, affordable housing, and homelessness? Are these no longer relevant issues in NJ? High end urban redevelopment is all good, with no downsides? Young people are free “consumers”, unencumbered by things like huge student debt, a lousy job market, rising housing costs, and a terrifying future of climate catastrophe?

4. Does NJ still have a State Plan, State Planning Commission, Highlands Council, Pinelands Commission, and DEP land use planning and regulatory programs?

How could you ignore all that and exclusively attribute an alleged positive land use trend to market forces and acquisition?

You got spun by self  interested conservation groups that economically benefit from the Green Acres program and a cowardly “academic” who avoids the regulatory and social implications of his data.

5. Are you aware that Gov. Murphy’s recently released Energy Master Plan postpones hard decisions on land use, building retrofits, and building codes until after 2030? (despite recent IPCC warning that we have about 10 -12 years to avoid irreversible catastrophic warming?

6. Ask professor Hasse, conservationists, and DEP to produce a map of green acres acquisitions.

Those acquisitions are opportunistic, based on willing sellers, and follow no natural resource based science or strategic land use plan.

Those acquisitions have had little or no impact on land development patterns, yet – without evidence in the from of a map or data –  your story attributes them (and market forces & demographic trends) as the exclusive factors driving land use, based on a hypothetical farmland preservation focus.

As virtually the only media game in Town in Trenton, NJ Spotlight must do better.

As award winning former NY Times reporter Chris Hedges writes today:

The rhetoric we use to describe ourselves is so disconnected from reality that it has induced collective schizophrenia.

Burden Of Paying Put On Residents, Not Corporations & Investors

Billions of Dollars In Water Infrastructure Investments Involved

NJ Spotlight reports today that Democratic legislators are moving legislation [S253[1R] that would dramatically shift the costs of paying for critical public health protections away from private water companies and their investors to NJ homeowners and businesses:

The cost of upgrading the infrastructure remains a thorny issue, as reflected in a late change to S-253 on how the cost should be divided. A late amendment to the bill would require investor-owned utilities to bear 60% of the cost of replacing lead service lines, with ratepayers paying for the remainder — a change from language in the original bill that would require ratepayers to pay only 25% of the bill.

The bill’s sponsors, Singleton and state Sen. Linda Greenstein (D-Mercer), agreed to the 60-40 formula after discussions with stakeholders including the state Department of Environmental Protection, Board of Public Utilities and the Governor’s Office, said David Smith, Singleton’s policy coordinator.

Why are the Murphy administration and Democratic legislators protecting private water company profits and investor returns over the interests of everyday people?

Billions of dollars are at stake.

This is really not surprising given the NJ Democratic Party’s support of privatization of water and sewer systems (and that terrible fast tracking privatization law passed!)

And just as we predicted, NJ Future supported private corporate interests and the allocation of a larger burden of costs to ratepayers.

But NJ Future – echoing the greed of private water companies – went even further to argue that people should pay 100% of the infrastructure upgrade costs, with private companies paying ZERO!

The utilities, for example, want ratepayers to pay the whole cost of infrastructure upgrades — but that, he said, would be “unfair.”

New Jersey Future, too, wants ratepayers in all but the most impoverished areas to pay all the cost for lead service line replacement, [NJ Future’s] Sturm said. She argued that the costs would be modest when spread across most ratepayers.

We predicted exactly this would happen:

Today, privatization and Foundation abuses combine, in an effort to hijack the agenda for responding to the public health crisis of lead in drinking water, see: Jersey Water Works Forms Task Force Focused on Lead in State’s Drinking Water. […]

The work of the Task Force is under the control of NJ Future, a “planning” group with a corporate and development oriented Board and a very checkered political history, going back to “smart growth” collaboration with the Whitman administration and more recently including secret planning with the Christie administration to privatize and develop Liberty State Park, a failed scheme (as the Bergen Record reported:)

Of course, the Task Force includes several representatives of the water companies that seek to avoid high cost real solutions, like regulatory mandates and community involvement to solving the lead problems.

NJ Future is not a public health, environmental or public interest group. They are a private group who represent corporate and development interests. They have no membership other than the corporate interests on their Board and the private foundations who fund them.They are a classic example of what I’ve called Green Cannibals.

Why is NJ Future considered a legitimate public “Stakeholder” by Legislators and the media spokespersons on this critical public issue?

I fired off this email to NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle and his editor John Mooney:

Jon – your report today:

“New Jersey Future, too, wants ratepayers in all but the most impoverished areas to pay all the cost for lead service line replacement, Sturm said. She argued that the costs would be modest when spread across most ratepayers.”

You need to disclose to readers who NJ Future represents – look at their Board and look at who funds them. Look at the membership of the coalition they are involved in and who funds them. NJ Future is NOT a public interest, public health, or environmental advocacy group. Your readers deserved to know that. And why would such a private and biased group be the lead spokesperson on a public health issue?

We warned folks that exactly this would happen, see:

Foundation Elites and Private Water Companies Hijack Lead In Drinking Water Issue

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2019/01/foundation-elites-and-private-water-companies-hijack-lead-in-drinking-water-issue/

Wolfe

Proponents did not even attempt to quantify greenhouse gas emissions

Number of EV’s On Road Goals Are Based on 16 Year Old Clean Car Legislation

In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness. ~~~ Al Gore (7/20/08), quoted here.

The transportation sector historically has had the highest carbon intensity, which continues in the projection because carbon-intensive petroleum remains the dominant fuel used in vehicles throughout the projection period. ~~~ US Energy Information Administration 2020 Forecast

I’ve posted 3 times now on major flaws in the NJ electric vehicle legislation signed into law  last Friday (see this and this and this).

But according to Gov. Murphy: (emphases mine)

Increasing the use of electric vehicles is a critical step to secure New Jersey’s clean energy future. By establishing aggressive goals and strong incentives for electric vehicles, we are repositioning our economy and state for a clean future. Today, I am proudly signing bipartisan legislation that will transform New Jersey’s transportation sector and modernize our infrastructure to support our goal of reaching 100 percent clean energy by 2050.

After watching the shameless self congratulation, self promotion, and fawning praise and sycophantic spin during the Gov.’s bill signing ceremony – watch it on You Tube – today we provide the most recent and readily accessible DEP greenhouse gas emissions data to try to fact check Gov. Murphy’s claims and to get a back of the envelope quantitative sense of what this highly touted EV program means in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and whether reductions will comport with the urgent timeframe based on science.

We will try to make this simple, even for the math challenged. I urge supporters of the bill to email me to tell me what I missed, got wrong, and/or left out.

1. The EV goals are not “aggressive”

We start by noting that the EV law created what has been described as an “aggressive goal” of 330,000 electric vehicles on the road by the year 2025.

The law does have more aggressive goals in the out years, but any GHG emissions reductions would occur past 2030, which is well past the vanishing 10 year window that climate scientists have warned that we have to dramatically reduce emissions to avoid catastrophic impacts.

That may sound aggressive in light of the fact that, according to DEP (@p.11), there were only 26,840 EV’s on the road in 2019. That’s about only 1% of approximately 3 million NJ registered passenger cars (2.8 million, in 2017) – and that doesn’t count trucks and buses and other transportation sector GHG emissions (more on that below).

But Gov. Murphy’s 2025 EV goal is already current law, based on the “California Car” law passed by the legislature in 2004, 16 years ago. NJ has failed to make real progress towards meeting that 16 year old goal. As NJ Spotlight noted:

By 2025, New Jersey is supposed to have more than 300,000 ZEVs on the road, a mandate it has to meet under the California low-emission car program it has agreed to comply with, along with 12 other states and jurisdictions.

So, Gov. Murphy’s “transformative” EV program is based on an EV on road goal that is little more than the 16 year old legal status quo, at least over a realistic 5 year planning horizon.

2. DEP GHG Emissions Inventory Underestimates Total Emissions –

The BEST CASE EV program would have a negligible impact on total greenhouse gas emissions

Now let’s look at the EV program in light of the most recent data on total annual NJ GHG emissions, according to NJ DEP’s most recently Greenhouse Gas Inventory:

Transportation sector emissions are discussed starting on page 8 – there is no mention of aviation, rail, or shipping impacts or lifecycle impacts.

According to DEP, the transportation sector accounts for 40.6 million tons, or 38.7% of total 2018 GHG emissions.

That DEP total does NOT include GHG emission from aviation, rail, or shipping, which are huge in NJ, given Newark airport and the Ports.

NJ is an urban, coastal, metropolitan corridor state, home of some of the nation’s largest airports, ports, and commercial and recreational shipping. For DEP to ignore GHG emission from those activities would be like Kansas or Iowa ignoring corn, soybean and wheat production impacts in their agricultural inventory. Absurd.

The GHG emissions DEP left out of the inventory are larger than any emissions reductions that might result from the EV program from now until after 2030.

In contrast, the NJ Transportation Planning Authority conducted a GHG inventory that did consider aviation, rail and shipping. It also included “upstream” – or lifecycle emissions:

According to NJTPA, “upstream” emissions are significant:

According to NJTPA, aviation accounts for about 2 million tons GHG emission (in 2020). Marine vessels account for an additional 650,000 tons, and rail more than 1.2 million tons. That’s a total of 3.85 million tons DEP does not consider (and that’s only for the north jersey NJTPA region, not statewide ).

So, NJ DEP’s GHG inventory is WAY TOO LOW because it does not include energy life-cycle emissions (up to an additional 25%) or emissions from aviation, rail, and marine vessels.

But before going deeper into the weeds of GHG inventory and projection methods, let’s get back to the EV program. But we will note, regarding emissions inventories, of course, that as the real GHG emissions increase, that diminishes the impact of EV’s on total GHG emissions. If DEP’s estimates are WAY TOO LOW, that means the EV programs impact is even SMALLER than we estimate here.

We will assume that the EV law applies primarily to passenger and light duty vehicles, similar to the California Car law, which according to DEP:

According to DEP data, passenger vehicles account for 40% of the vehicle emissions, or 16.2 million tons, or 15.4% of total emissions. Passenger trucks and light commercial trucks are 57%, but only a portion of those are subject to the EV law and I can’t get the data due to DEP’s formatting.

DEP breaks this transportation sector GHG emission data further.

So, BEST CASE, assuming the 2025 goal of 330,000 EV’s on the road is met, that EV’s represent about 10% of the total passenger vehicle fleet, every EV replaces an internal combustion engine car, and all other GHG emission factors remain constant, the 2025 EV goal would reduce GHG emissions by less than 1.6 million tons, or less than 1.5%.(and that is FAR less that the carbon that is sequestered in NJ forests – more on that issue in a future post).

Is a 1.5% GHG emissions reduction “transformative” change, as Gov. Murphy claims?

For many reasons, we have little confidence that the BEST CASE will actually be achieved.

We know that all other assumed GHG emission factors will not remain constant.

As I’ve noted, there has been little progress over the last 16 years in meeting the California Car EV goals. Worse, the new EV law’s goals are aspirational: there are no enforcement sticks to provide incentives for compliance or deterrence for violations.

The law does not mandate that a new EV force the retirement of an internal combustion engine or that total internal combustion vehicles or total vehicle miles travelled or total GHG emissions be reduced.

In addition to those statutory flaws, there are technical issues to consider.

The number of vehicles (all vehicles, including trucks and buses) and the vehicle miles traveled by passenger vehicles all will increase.

Nationally, vehicle miles travelled have increased  by 28.5% from 1994 – 2018.

These increases are very likely to significantly reduce, if not wipe out, the small emissions reductions associated with the EV program. Just look at the NJ VMT and emissions data:

Note the BLUE LINE – steep increase in VMT (Source: NJ DEP GHG Emissions Inventory, 2018)

As shown in Figure 2, these [GHG emission] reductions occurred against the background of continuing growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) since the economic recovery in 2010 (VMT declined during the 2008-2009 economic recession).

The rate of increase in VMT is outstripping the increases in fuel efficiency. That locks in increases in GHG emissions.

And thus far, we’ve limited this to the GHG emissions from the transportation sector.

Economic growth will drive increases in GHG emissions from other sectors, again reducing the impact of the EV program on total emissions, but that analysis is beyond our scope.

Finally, the EV legislation diverted $300 million, over 10 years, from the RGGI funds and Clean Energy Fund (including energy efficiency and low income energy assistance) to pay for the EV rebates. These programs that were defunded provided some greenhouse gas emission reductions. These emissions reductions must be subtracted from any reductions associated with the EV program.

It is possible that the RGGI & Clean Energy Fund programs that were defunded provided MORE current GHG emissions reductions than those future reductions that might result from the EV rebate program. Thus, the EV rebate program could end up increasing emissions, even under the BEST CASE scenario!

3. Conclusions

So, with all that in mind, let me finish with a few conclusions:

1. the 2004 Clean Car (California car) program is incredibly complex, including a myriad of credits. I could not make sense of it on basic facts, like who is responsible for meeting the goals, what happens if they are not met, and how many cars must be EV’s.

The NJ EV law seems to replicate these flaws.

2. The 2004 NJ Clean Car law set a goal of 330,000 EV’s on the road by 2025, according to press reports (I could not find that number in government documents).

3. The NJ 2020 EV legislation, claimed to be “transformative change”, set the SAME 330,000 by 2025 goal!

4. For context, there are about 2.8 million registered cars in NJ (2016 data, doesn’t include trucks, buses, et al)

5. Vehicle miles travelled have increased  by 28.5% from 1994 – 2018.

6. The EV legislation provides $300 million over 10 years (not NEW money, but a deeply regressive diversion of existing RGGI climate money and BPU Societal Benefit Charge low income energy assistance money) to give car purchasers a $5,000 rebate. At $5K a pop, that’s only 60,000 EV’s – just a fraction of the 330,000 goal.

Based on these facts, I conclude that, even if the EV goal are met – which is highly unlikely – that GHG emissions from the transportation sector will INCREASE, despite any reductions in emissions growth associated with EV’s.

On top of that, there is no data – and no attempt to evaluate – the alleged GHG emissions reductions associated with EV’s with the emissions reductions from the RGGI and SBC energy programs from with the $300 million was diverted.

It is possible that diversion of the SBC money to the EV program will actually INCREASE GHG emissions, because other uses of SBC money may be more cost effective in terms of reductions of GHG per dollar invested.

And I was pleasantly surprised by the role of urban forests in sequestering carbon:

Source – NJTPA – see links above