Gov. Murphy Is A Climate Fraud – Betrays His Own Climate Commitments, The BPU Energy Master Plan, And Weak DEP Rule Proposal

DEP Abandoned Proposal To Impose Small Emission Reduction Requirements On Boilers

DEP Protects Large Fossil Polluters By Locking In Lax Emission Rates

The Murphy DEP just abandoned proposed rules that would require the gradual retrofit of boilers in certain buildings – veteran reporter Mike Symons wrote the story and he got it right, see:

• NJ abandons plan to require costly electric boiler upgrades

I will make just a few very brief observations:

1. Thank goodness for Jeff Tittel, because the rest of the NJ environmental and climate “activist” community is either in the tank and cheerleading for Murphy and his sham former corporate lawyer DEP Commissioner, or clueless and incapable of even analyzing a DEP regulatory proposal.

2. Thank goodness for veteran reporters like Mike Symons who know how to write a complex regulatory policy story. There are very few of his kind still around. What passes for journalism today is largely incompetent stenography of government press releases.

3. Sadly, the Ray Cantor (NJBIA) quote about emissions – not costs – and the PJM grid is correct:

“In addition to the millions of additional dollars this provision would have cost these establishments, the fact of the matter is converting a modern, fuel-efficient natural gas boiler to an electric one would actually increase carbon emissions due to the carbon footprint of the PJM grid,” Cantor said.

I made exactly the same criticism when the DEP rules were proposed last December.

Ray Cantor’s point about the PJM emissions rates holds for the rest of the proposal that DEP adopted as well (i.e. the power plant emissions rules that DEP adopted).

But the reality is actually worse than Cantor noted.

The DEP rules not only don’t reduce boiler emissions – or would result in small emission reductions – they would allow total emissions to INCREASE.

Based on DEP’s own data and statements in the proposal, I wrote this last December:

“The FREE MARKET PJM grid (unregulated) will produce LOWER EMISSIONS than the DEP rule!

CO2 emissions will INCREASE under the DEP rules.”

4. But what Symons and Tittle missed is that by adopting the proposed weak power plant emissions rates, the DEP protects big fossil power plant polluters. DEP did something very similar years ago in adopting a emissions “cap” under RGGI that was far higher than actual emissions. So I’ll repeat the sub-headline

DEP Protects Large Fossil Polluters By Locking In Lax Emission Rates

Here’s the complete post, where I go deep into the weeds and you confirm this conclusion:

• Murphy DEP’s Proposed New Greenhouse Gas (CO2) Emission Rule Is Far Weaker Than Obama EPA Clean Power Plan

Gov. Murphy is now as big a climate fraud as Joe Biden.

And that takes some doing.