[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're honored to have the Honorable Senator Bob Smith, who's chair of the Senate Environment Education Committee.

Good to see you, Senator.

- Good.

Environment and Energy Committee, yes, sir.

- I screwed up.

It's, actually, back in the day I served on the assembly, Environment and Energy Committee and I just screwed it up.

- It's okay.

- Maybe that's why I lost the election.

- If that's the worst mistake you make in 2023, you're in great shape.

- Thank you, and we're moving into 2024.

This will be seen in a little bit later.

Hey, do this for us.

I'm gonna talk about the power grid in a second, which you're the leading member of the legislature talking about it.

We'll make sense of it.

But Orsted, four months before they decide to leave, Governor Murphy proposes a $1 billion tax credit to keep Orsted here involved in wind energy.

And they go, "Listen, we can't make this work.

"Supply chain, inflation.

We're outta here."

Did they give New Jersey the shaft, A, and B, what the heck happens to wind energy now, Senator?

- So A, they did give us the shaft.

I don't think they were dealing with our government in an honest way, all right?

They were the ones who brought to us the fact that the interest rates had gone up by six percentage points, blockchain was a nightmare, getting materials was a nightmare, and they needed extra help.

So we did it.

We allowed them to get the tax credit.

And by the way, none of that money's got to them.

You know, the taxpayers of New Jersey are gonna ultimately benefit from it.

But we listened to them, and we tried to get them because they were the, at the moment, they were the biggest single vendor of wind energy off the Jersey coast.

And we've already got a port for wind energy facilities, Paulsboro, New Jersey, and we saw tremendous benefits to our jobs and revenues in the state of New Jersey.

But if you're not gonna do it, don't tell us a lie.

Tell us the truth, because it just ended up with a lot of egg on everybody's face.

But to answer your second question, we're not giving up on wind.

We have one of the best offshore wind resources in the world.

Not in the United States, in the world, so you will see wind energy in our future, but it won't be Orsted.

- So, Senator, hold on, a quick follow up to that.

Sorry for interrupting.

People say, "Hey, wait a minute, what about the whales?"

Wind energy.

Could you clarify what's real and what's BS?

- Sure.

So the real is that there are more than four studies by different agencies, different groups, scientifically based, with real scientists doing the math, the investigation, and every single one of them says there's no impact on whales from windmills.

And by the way, we have no windmills up at this point, as well, as everybody knows, so it's not any current windmills that are hurting them.

In Europe, they didn't have that experience.

And the truth of the matter is, there are, I hate to say it in American politics, I don't wanna be a conspiracy theorist, but you have the whole fossil industry not wanting to see windmills and wind energy take off, so they have a couple of operatives in this game who are trying to scare the public that somehow we're hurting our fisheries, and we're not.

You know, the legislature, the governor, we're all in this together, and we love our coast.

We love the Jersey shore.

We're not gonna let it get hurt by anything.

- Real quick follow up.

Senator, Tony Bucco, your colleague, has come on many times saying, "Yeah, climate change is real.

"We wanna be a part of the solution.

"But the governor, Senator Smith, and others," he doesn't mention you by name, "But the Democrats won't tell us "the real cost of this, A, "and B, plus, you know, the governor wants to come "and take your stove anyway."

What's real?

What's BS again?

- Baloney on top of baloney on top of baloney.

Nobody wants to take anybody's stove or any of their appliances.

What the governor and the legislature are trying to do is to provide incentives.

Incentives, not demands.

Not laws saying you have to change anything over, but giving you incentives for you to use electric appliances and more electrification of buildings, but not penalties against you if you don't.

And the reason for that is, the way that we make serious progress on the carbon emissions in the Garden State is by electrifying everything, but having the source of electricity be renewable electricity, not from burning coal or oil or even natural gas.

- All right, the power grid.

What is it, Senator, and why should we be concerned, please?

- So, it's bobby pins and chewing gum.

Now, you have to be old to remember bobby pins, but it is very ad hoc.

It's always been ad hoc.

It's been for whatever was needed in Town 27 or over here on the western side of the state.

It's very, very fragile, and that's a problem because before, as an example, you could install a grid-scale solar facility with lots of renewable energy you have to arrange for what's called an interconnection.

You have to be able to connect to the grid so the renewable electricity can go all over the state or into the PJM system.

The way electricity, the rules work, you have to be very careful when you interconnect into a grid, because if you imbalance the grid, you're gonna get a blackout.

Not a meltdown, but a blackout.

And so the answer is that when you try to do the interconnection, it's gonna take you a year to get an approval, at least a year, and by that time, the deal is dead.

That's the problem.

We have to make our grid resilient.

We had an opportunity after Sandy.

We didn't take it.

If you remember, BPU said to all the utilities, "Tell us what you need to make a sustainable grid."

They did, and then the ratepayer advocates said it cost too much, and they were all cut back tremendously, so we don't have a resilient grid.

We don't have a grid that right now, if you had a grid scale plan together for an enormous open space out in the western side of the state, you wouldn't be able to get it set up.

You can't- - Okay, Senator, it's really cold right now, but summertime, this is real.

- Yeah.

- This is real, and this could impact people's lives.

- Big, Big time.

- Before I let you go, how high a priority is this for the legislature and the governor right now?

- It's not the highest.

I'm gonna try in the next term to make it the highest priority.

Because the truth, if wanna survive as a species, we better get going.

Global climate change is real and it's killing us.

I mean, think about the 29 people who died in that rainstorm that we got from Mississippi about two years ago, all right?

There's no reason they should have died.

Water was coming down in a place in New Jersey where it had never fallen before, and that's because we've changed the planet.

The planet, the atmosphere, is now holding more moisture as it warms up, and when it comes down, it comes down in ocean loads.

- We'll keep talking with State Senator Bob Smith, the Chair of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee.

Good to see you, Senator.

- Good to see you.

- All right, Steve Adubato.

Senator Smith.

See you next time.

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