even as the federal government rolls

back programs to curb the carbon

emissions that contribute to climate

change the state is moving to cut

greenhouse gases by 80% to coincide with

an encore presentation of the national

PBS series sinking cities we % part two

of the series we've been working on

since last winter on how the state of

New Jersey is top scientists engineers

urban planners and its citizens are

addressing the peril and promise of

climate change with the state already

starting to weather the effects of

climate change more intense storms

higher temperatures and rising seas

governor Phil Murphy's landmark clean

energy bill puts the state on a path to

achieving the highest standard for

renewable energy in the country

requiring 50 percent of the state's

power to come from clean renewables like

wind and solar by the year 2050 the

Clean Energy Act makes a good start on

bringing us something new community

solar new community solar that

Department of Environmental Protection

Commissioner Katherine McCabe says would

be available to all including people

living in low income housing

developments and multi-family complexes

or even if they cannot put solar panels

on their roof they'll be able to

participate in community based solar

projects that will allow them to

participate in getting their home energy

from solar energy New Jersey is already

one of the nation's leading solar energy

states with nearly 100,000 arrays

installed it's the fastest growing

segment of the state's clean energy

sector but the system's costs passed on

to customers are high the draft of the

state's energy master plan update

largely avoids calculating the costs of

migrating to newer less conventional

ways of producing distributing consuming

and conserving energy but lays out an

ambitious roadmap to achieve the

governor's clean energy goals from

pushing renewables to expanding the

power grid and electrically heating

homes and businesses the plan also

maintains the state's heavy reliance on

natural gas

which heats 75% of New Jersey homes the

prospect of installing pipelines across

the state has been controversial but

mccabe says it's actually cheaper and

greener to the natural gas structure

that was built has helped to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions in the state of

New Jersey over the past eight or ten

years the state's nuclear plants emit no

greenhouse gasses at all

so the commissioner says they'll remain

a key part of the energy portfolio Salem

and Hope Creek are both at the now at

the end of the Delaware River where it

comes out into the bay there and they

are on the water but they are built

extremely well they've taken a lot of

precautions to prevent being damaged the

new energy blueprint encourages

utilities to further upgrade the power

grid on shore and they may have to

consider connecting to power from

offshore governor Murphy's executive

order includes an ambitious plan to

harness the wind his goal is to generate

thirty five hundred megawatts of

offshore wind energy enough to power a

million and a half homes by 2030 some

developers are already lining up to bid

the Danish company Oersted has opened an

office in Atlantic City to support the

firms ocean wind project a 250 square

mile patch of sea some 10 miles off

Atlantic City Coast that would be the

future site of wind turbines Norwegian

company Ecuador is eyeing wind farms off

Sandy Hook that it says could be up and

running by 2024 another developer is

looking at tracks off Cape May the huge

scale of the wind firms might first

require the state to train a workforce

develop a supply chain invest hundreds

of millions of dollars upgrading the

ports to handle the assembly and

shipping of the giant turbines the state

may also be required to make an upfront

investment in electrical vehicle

charging stations that can support

electric vehicles at least as of today

the federal incentive is in place for

the purchase of electric vehicles and we

need to get a charging infrastructure

underway DEP has a program called it

pays to plug in

we've spent about 800,000 dollars so far

and have a two and a half million dollar

waiting list for it has been for a

workplace chargers so far but we're

expanding the program so that multi-unit

dwellings will also be able to have

electric chargers dr. Robert Cobb

director of the Rutgers Institute of

Earth ocean and atmospheric sciences has

an eye on the policies of clean energy

as well as the science it's gonna move

you on the right track

I think he has is heading in the right

direction the the state has launched a

coastal resilience planning process it

can't be a top-down process it really

has to be a process that hears the

voices of the people in our municipality

and and leads to strategies that are

owned by coastal communities the BPU is

holding hearings around the state to get

feedback and they hope buy-in from

citizens so what the BPU and and we and

the government entirely needs to be

doing is looking for the sweet spot that

is what we need to do but what we can

afford

still the rollout of clean energy will

be costly and the greatest challenge

will be finding a way to pay for

replacing an aging power grid and

funding the state's ambitious energy

goals while keeping your utility bills

affordable

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