NJ Energy Report – October 2023

Actions and comments in New Jersey affecting the energy supply.  Information is mainly from NJ spotlight.

Comments

Climate Change Teaching in Schools

  • The New Jersey Board of Education has authorized the teaching of climate change in all subjects.
  • The curriculum has not been presented but if copied from a California climate change curriculum, the science aspects are eliminated and replaced with ideology.

 

Energy Supply

Offshore Wind Turbines

  • On November 1 Orsted cancelled the Ocean Winds 1&2 projects. The costs have risen so significantly that even with a billion dollars in tax credits from New Jersey, Orsted decided it was cheaper to pay cancellation penalties than to build the two projects. The decisions will have unknown economic and environmental impact in the renewable energy plans of Murphy and Biden.
  • The whale deaths and extensive political coastal opposition to the offshore wind projects had significant effect but were not the cause of the cancellations. Wind power was sold as being cheap because the wind is free.  What was ignored was the equipment was very expensive because the wind is intermittent, unreliable, and dilute.
  • Biden caused inflation drove the wind turbine and installation costs too high for the agreed electricity selling price. When the state refused to renegotiate the price, instead using tax credits as payment, Orsted pulled the plug. New Jersey legislators were afraid to approve additional subsides to cover the increased price because of the coastal opposition.
  • The New Jersey BPU has requested bids for four additional offshore wind complexes and has received companies interested in bidding. Whether the companies will bid, remains to be seen.
  • New York has refused to renegotiate contract wind prices. Perhaps companies will pull out there also

 

Natural Gas

  • Natural gas lines and compressor equipment wear out and must be replaced as does any equipment which is regularly used. In the PSEG territory there are pipelines a hundred years old  which leak methane the main ingredient of natural gas. The leaking gas is an economic loss to PSEG and a climate catastrophe according to the climate cult.
  • PSEG wants to replace these old pipelines and requested permission from the BPU to do so. Permission was granted by the BPU but the climate cult protested the replacement because any investment in fossil fuel piping will become a stranded cost when fossil fuels are abandoned. Also repairing pipelines may allow extended fossil fuel use.
  • Are leaking pipelines preferable to an extended pipeline life?

Hydrogen

  • The Biden administration gave away seven (7) billion dollars to build hydrogen hubs around the country. This money will investigate and design different methods to uses hydrogen to produce thermal heat or electrical energy to replace natural gas. Instead investigating and design improved method of using and transporting natural gas, an entire new and untried hydrogen industry will be developed.
  • There are many problems with using hydrogen as a fuel. The first is hydrogen does not exist freely in nature and requires energy to be transformed for use as a fuel. A second problem is hydrogen’s small size requires new pipelines.
  • The hydrogen hub idea will consume billions of dollars but will never be built to produce large quantities of hydrogen because it would require massive production facilities, extensive wind and solar power and multiple new pipelines. The climate alarmists will never permit a massive construction process.
  • This program is welfare for engineers and chemists to have fun designing hydrogen test facilities.

 

Transportation

Electric Vehicles (Cars)

  • An Op-Ed by an electric vehicle advocate group, promises Camelot in New Jersey if the state entices or forces everyone to buy an EV. It also demands that New Jersey follow California regulations on EV’s regardless of New Jersey resident’s opinions.
  • It references a report to support its demands. The report is authored by the Sierra Club and National Resource Defense Council and shows all the alleged benefits of implementing the California regulations.
  • The report projects with certainty the number of deaths that will be avoided and the amount of money saved by electrification.  It projects increased jobs will occur with higher wages.
  • Yet behind the `certain’ numbers and projections for 2027 to 2050 are the words scenarios, estimated, improvements in technology and positive macro effects.
  • In other words, the authors hope and guess this adoption of California regulations will initiate an economic improvement.

 

 

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LibertyAndProsperity.com

info@libertyandprosperity.com

 

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