New Jersey's on the road to building a

100% clean energy economy by 2050

rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas

Initiative and replacing non-renewable

fuels with wind and solar now lawmakers

are hearing from experts about the

political and practical realities of

going green Michael Hill reports on the

peril and promise the challenge of

climate change

tell us what we should be doing a joint

legislative committee heard the impact

of climate change and ways to mitigate

it from invited speakers the president

of the Board of Public Utilities said

prolonged power outages after there was

three straight Nor'easters last year

taught some important lessons lessons

the BPU thought Irene and Sandy had

talked the board is moving on

establishing a dozen Town Center

microgrids to keep the power on for

essential services we are never going to

eliminate power outages our goal is to

reduce the duration of those outages the

BPU president said 46% of air pollutants

come from transportation fuel for the

state's big quest for cleaner energy up

until about 16 18 months ago the Board

of Public Utilities was this sleepy

little regulatory agency making sure

that our investor owned utilities played

nice in the sandbox we are now because

of not only our solar program but the

initiatives regarding our Windham

program have become an international

powerhouse the state DEP is using money

from the VW settlement for electric

buses and charging stations if you don't

have many electric vehicle charging

stations in your community our electric

vehicle program can help the planet is

running a fever and Rutgers scientists

blame humans in order to stabilize

global climate human emissions of carbon

dioxide must be brought as close to zero

as possible a forest conservation has

said urban forests are doing the most to

reverse the impact of climate change and

forests in general 15 percent of our

carbon emissions captured in our forests

and in our forest products so it's a

forest or in the US or all

ready a huge part of the climate change

solution the Rutgers Eagleton poll just

sampled opinions on the environment for

the New Jersey climate change Alliance

two-thirds of New Jerseyans are

concerned about the effects of climate

change on their life family members and

people around them their level of

knowledge about climate change varies

with more people reporting higher

knowledge on the causes environmental

impacts and how it may affect them in

the future but not lower knowledge on

how to prepare environmentalists such as

Jeff tittle of the Sierra Club say

they've been listening to these kinds of

legislative hearings for the past 15

years it's well past time to act we've

had this discussion when we passed the

global warming response act in 2007 and

before that we had this after Hurricane

sandy and now here we are there's a real

sense of urgency they have to move now

where the clock is going to run out the

committee co-chairs say they have no

delusions we really have to work so hard

on is applying that and making sure all

the work that's happening and all the

academic and the private initiatives is

included in government we're working on

legislation to require that any new

energy proofing facilities in New Jersey

are non fossil fuel we cannot have any

more carbon dioxide put into our hair

lawmakers environmentalists and

scientists say they hear the clock

ticking Michael Hill NJTV news

[Music]