New Jersey is pushing to cut carbon emissions from the mammoth Port of New York and New Jersey, with an infusion of more than $35.5 million to electrify cargo transportation and cut emissions in environmental justice areas.

Gov. Phil Murphy on Feb. 16 announced grants totaling $19.5 million for the purchase of electric cargo equipment and medium- and heavy-duty trucks to reduce carbon and other emissions in or around ports. The grants are part of a $100 million fund to promote electric vehicle use with funds from the state’s Volkswagen settlement.

The plan followed the Murphy administration’s announcement in January of a $16 million incentive program designed to cut emissions in two environmental justice communities close to ports. The state will award vouchers of between $25,000 and $100,000 to fund the purchase of electric medium- and heavy-duty zero-emission trucks within 10 miles of Newark, an area that includes most of the Port of New York and New Jersey, and Camden, home to the far smaller South Jersey Port Corp. (SJPC).

Emissions from the Port of New York and New Jersey, the largest port on the East Coast, have long been a concern for Newark area residents and environmental groups, reflecting a dynamic that has played out at ports across the country, especially in California. The dramatic rise in cargo volumes through many U.S. ports in recent years has increased truck and vessel traffic, raising emissions that impact nearby communities. That has forced ports to try to pursue efforts to cut pollution and protect area residents without impairing the cargo flow that is vital to the economy.

In the Port of New York and New Jersey, that dynamic is felt most strongly in New Jersey, which hosts the four largest of the port’s six container terminals. Together those four handle 90% of the port’s containerized cargo.

Murphy’s initiatives reflect his drive to put the state on track for 100% clean energy by 2050, in part by reducing energy consumption and emissions in transportation, which accounts for 42% of greenhouse gas emissions in New Jersey, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

As part of that drive, DEP said it plans to introduce rules in the spring that will require truck manufacturers to sell an increasing number of EVs in the state beginning in 2025. Modeled after California regulations, the proposed rules would also require truck fleet owners to report their level of EV use so that the state can collect data for future rules, which are expected to include EV purchase requirements for the fleets.

The DEP also said that in the long term, it will consider rules that would require the use of zero-emissions cargo handling equipment.

“We have been on this very slow crawl of the evolution to electric, and I think we’re almost reaching the top of our mountain,” said Bethann Rooney, deputy port director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). “Things are coming together. We’re on the brink of being able to really make some important changes in short order.”

Faster Transition to EVs

The $19.5 million in grants will fund a significant increase in the use of EVs in the port, where electric yard tractors are scarce and just three electric drayage trucks — tractor trailers that move containers in or out of the port — are in use, according to the PANYNJ.

But the effort also highlights how far the state has yet to go. The funding will put an additional 16 electric drayage trucks in the port, a fraction of the 9,000 diesel trucks that serve the port each month.

The funds allocated for the port include:

• $850,000 to PANYNJ for a mobile electric crane;
• $2.3 million to buy container moving “straddle carriers” for two port terminals;
• $3.5 million for truckers and warehouse operators to buy 10 container-handling vehicles or yard tractors;
• $4.8 million for trucking company International Motor Freight of Newark to buy 15 electric trucks; and
• $6.6 million to fund the acquisition of 23 yard tractors for use at the SJPC, which handles non-containerized cargo such as steel slabs, cocoa beans and wind turbine equipment.

Growth in Cargo and Emissions

The challenge facing the northern port was reflected in a PANYNJ report released in December called the Multi-Facility Emissions Inventory, which showed that in 2019, the port released 709,069 tons of GHGs. That was an increase of 2% over the 2018 figure, as cargo volumes increased by 4%. The report said heavy-duty vehicles were the largest producer of GHGs, emitting about twice as many as the next category, ocean going vessels. Third ranked was port cargo-handling equipment.

An unrelated report on mobile emissions in the Newark area, prepared for the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, found that the highest transportation emissions burden occurred in “locations close to high density truck and bus routes and locations close to port facilities and rail yards.” The largest impact on “PM2.5 [particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in width], black carbon and NOx” emissions comes from “non-roadway sources, particularly locomotives and port operations,” the report, which was released in November, concluded.

Kim Gaddy, environmental justice organizer for Clean Water Action New Jersey and a member of the Coalition for Healthy Ports NY NJ, welcomed Murphy’s EV funding. She called on all government agencies to help the push toward zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs).

“Gradual, incremental steps just won’t do,” she said in a press statement after Murphy’s announcement. “All of the vehicles and equipment serving the Newark port” must be electrified, she said.

Removing Dirty Trucks

With 14,000 truck trips on a typical day, the PANYNJ for more than a decade has sought to reduce emissions by offering incentives — now totaling more than $30 million — to trucking companies to replace older diesel trucks with newer, cleaner models.

In 2016, the authority crafted — and then dropped — a plan to prohibit all trucks with engines made in 2007 or earlier. Instead, PANYNJ continued the incentive program, which now awards grants of $25,000 to truckers that replace an aging truck with one using a 2014 model engine or newer.

Even as older trucks are removed from the port, however, emissions have grown, though far more slowly than cargo volumes, according to the Multi-Facility Emissions Inventory. From 2006 to 2019, emissions grew by 3%, and cargo volumes increased by 47%.

New Jersey’s efforts follow those in California, where severe air pollution has for years triggered aggressive measures to reduce truck emissions in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Los Angeles, for example, said it already has 29 ZEVs working in the port.

Both Los Angeles and Long Beach prohibit trucks older than 2014 from joining their truck fleets. And the California Air Resources Board in 2020 adopted a rule — like the one now under consideration in New Jersey — that requires truck makers to sell an increasing number of zero-emission trucks in the state.

In New Jersey-New York, the transition to electric trucks is still nascent. The first test of an EV drayage trip took place in August 2019. But Gail Toth, executive director of the New Jersey Motor Truck Association, said truckers balk at the limited range of electric trucks (about 250 miles) with price tags about twice as high as the $150,000 cost of a diesel truck, along with the cost of building a charging station.

Red Hook Container Terminals expects to begin operating 10 electric yard tractors, or container handling vehicles, in March. | Hudson County Motors

The implementation of electric yard tractors is growing more rapidly, however. Trucking company Best Transportation in 2019 ordered two electric yard tractors. And Red Hook Container Terminals expects in March to begin operating 10 electric yard tractors, purchased with an earlier round of VW settlement funding, said James Sherman, vice president of Climate Change Mitigation Technologies, which helped create the project.

Sherman believes that Murphy’s funding programs could now put New Jersey at the forefront of the shift to EVs.

“New Jersey can be the second largest battery electric truck market in the United States” after California, he said.