Monday's Environmental/Energy Bills

For Immediate Release

May 29, 2015

Contact Jeff Tittel 609-558-9100

Monday's Environmental Bills

Assembly Housing and Community Development Meeting

A4316 (Caride) - would establish the Meadowlands Flood Advisory Taskforce to make recommendations to reduce flooding impacts. The Taskforce would include state and local representatives, scientists, engineers, and emergency management officials. The Taskforce would submit a final report with findings and conclusions. For 30 years we have talked about dealing will flooding in the Meadowlands and we need to ensure that the Taskforce Report is not another plan that will be ignored, but kicks off action to solve the issue of flooding.

This bill doesn’t deal with sea level rise, climate change, or by-outs in restoring natural systems. We are concerned that it will be pushing flood control projects that won’t work since most man-made structures like floodwalls and dikes only give us a false sense of security. They allow for more development and put more people in harm’s way. We oppose this bill until it is amended to look at sea level rise, climate change, and non-structural solutions to flooding.

“The problem is there is always a flood of problems, but a drought of action. Without a long term commitment for funding and a stop to the weakening of environmental protections nothing will get solved,” said Jeff Tittel. “We have seen dozens of reports on flooding, but the basic and best use for them is to elevate your furniture to protect from flooding since they never get implemented anyway. Unless we deal with sea level rise and look at natural solutions, all we’re doing is putting people in harm’s way.”

Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities Meeting

A3369 (Garcia) - Establishes Clean Energy Technology Center and allocates revenues from Societal Benefits Charge to a creation of clean energy-related employment opportunities. We support this bill if it is amended to provide funding from other sources.

“We support this concept and think that the Center is a good idea but we oppose using Societal Benefit Charge to fund it. The Christie Administration has already taken more than a billion dollars out of clean energy funds and this bill would take even more. Our concern is that it takes money away from homeowners buying energy efficient furnaces and weatherizing their homes. That is where the money should be going first,” said Jeff Tittel.

A1417 (Chivukula) - Governmental Energy Reliability and Saving Public Private Partnership Act, allows private entities to work on energy related projects on government facilities. This legislation encourages a public and private partnership (P3) for energy related projects including combined heat and power facilities. This legislation is geared to powering facilities that were affected during Superstorm Sandy including colleges, hospitals, police and fire departments, water and wastewater facilities. By allowing private companies to build and maintain this will improve the reliability, efficiency, and cost of these facilities especially during a disaster.

“With monies being diverted from energy efficiency programs, we support this legislation because it will help bring together capital from both the public and private sector for energy efficiency and co-generation projects. Even though we don’t normally support public-private partnerships; we believe that this is a financing mechanism that can help make energy projects a reality,” said Tittel.

A3838 (McKeon)/ S2420 (Smith) - Increases electric power net metering capacity threshold to 7.5% of statewide demand. Net metering allows electricity customers who generate their own electricity from renewable energy to bank their excess electricity in the form of kilowatt hour credits. This legislation will increase customer’s net metering threshold to 7.5%, which was originally 2.5% or in some cases no net metering was offered. Vermont just passed legislation allowing net metering up to 15%.

“This legislation is important because it give incentives for people to put solar on their homes and businesses. This will allow for not only increased payment for people who want to install solar, but it will also help them get the financing. We think this is an important bill that moves solar forward in New Jersey,” said Jeff Tittel.

S564 (Smith)/ A4186 (Eustace) - Establishes "Solar Roof Installation Warranty Program" in EDA and transfers $2 million from societal benefits charge to initially fund program. This sets up a fund in the EDA for solar rooftop installations for those businesses who may lose their roof warranties. We support the Solar Roof Installation Warranty Program.

“People don’t realize that in some instances when you put solar on your roof you can lose your roof warranty. This legislature is necessary to help ensure that businesses and others who do rooftop solar can be protected and have their warranties,” said Jeff Tittel.

A4180 (Eustace) /S2691 (Greenstein) - This bill establishes a micro-grid pilot program. This helps make back-up systems in towns more resilient because they can keep functioning when the entire grid goes down. We also believe that you can tie microgrids into renewable energy as a way to reduce air and carbon pollution and make our infrastructure more resilient. The technology will reduce costs and make local power systems greener and more reliable. The bill should be amended to prioritize projects that use renewable energy over fuel-driven ones. Consumers would like to see other pilot projects for municipalities other for just emergencies.

“We support micro-grids because we see this as part of a clean energy program for the future. We believe we should link micro-grids to renewable energy,” said Jeff Tittel.