New Jersey lawmakers backed legislation Monday that would allow local governments to issue bonds to fund the purchase of electric vehicles, adding to the surge in legislation focused on promoting clean energy that lawmakers hope to approve before the session ends in mid-January.

The Assembly Appropriations Committee voted 10-1 with no comment to advance the bill, A-2208, which would create an exception to an existing law that prohibits local and county governments from bonding projects that have a useful life of less than five years. The law also prevents governments from issuing bonds for the purchase of passenger vehicles and station wagons.

The bill approved Monday would amend that law to permit counties and municipalities to bond for passenger cars and station wagons that are “solely fueled by a battery or equivalent energy storage device charged from an electricity supply external to the vehicle or by a renewable power source.”

The committee’s support for the bill followed the advance last Thursday of several clean-energy related bills that lawmakers would like to send to the desk of Gov. Phil Murphy by the term ends. Bills that are not enacted by mid-January would have to be refiled to move forward.

Master Plan Triggers Competing Views

Among the most high profile and contentious of the bills that moved in recent days was A5720. The bill, advanced by the Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on a 4-2 vote, would codify into law the main elements of the 2019 Energy Master Plan crafted by Murphy. The vote follows support for the bill by the full Senate in June. (See Lawmakers Back Putting NJ’s Clean Energy Plan into Law.)

At the time of the Senate vote, the bill provided a way of ensuring that Murphy’s aggressive clean energy goals would stay in place even if he lost his re-election fight on Nov. 2. Murphy won re-election with a 2.9% margin against Republican Jack Ciattarelli.

The bill would codify key planks of the plan, including the goal of putting 330,000 light-duty vehicles on state roads by 2025. Other parts of the bill would require the state’s mass transit agency, New Jersey Transit, to have in development at least one battery-powered train by 2025 and that New Jersey generate 7.5 GW of offshore wind by 2035.

The bill, which now needs the support of the full General Assembly to land on Murphy’s desk, sparked a vigorous debate over the Master Plan’s merits, and whether the proposals are realistic enough to sustain the rigidity of codification into law.

Ray Cantor, vice president of government affairs for the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, one of the state’s largest business advocacy groups, argued that the plan failed to meet the most important criteria of being affordable and ensuring that the state’s energy system is reliable. He also expressed concern that the Murphy administration had never calculated the cost of meeting its requirements.

“The Energy Master Plan was meant to be a fluid document to be updated every three years based on new information, new technology [and] new policy directions,” he said. “This would lock it in place in 2021.

“This bill would set unattainable goals, unachievable goals,” he said. “And when that happens, regulators then make bad decisions. They tend to push the limits and make requirements that can’t be met. They waste money.”

Kate Gibbs, deputy director for the Engineers Labor-Employer Cooperative, which represents operating engineers and their employers, added that the plan is “not rooted in reality.”

“It’s more about virtue signaling and relies more on political science than the laws of physics,” she said. “Passing this legislation is setting our state up for a very expensive gambit, one that New Jersey residents and businesses cannot afford. And that will put an incredible strain on the potential for long-term economic development.”

The National Resources Defense Council, Environment New Jersey and Clean Water Action said that regardless of any deficiencies in the plan, the urgency of the need to combat climate change requires that legislators codify the main plan elements. That way there is a greater likelihood that the plan will be carried out, they argued, adding that the cost of not responding to climate change — through damage and destruction from extreme weather events — would be much higher.

Eric Miller, New Jersey energy policy director for NRDC, said the legislation would enable the state to keep its commitment to reducing carbon emission policies, such as the goal to produce 7.5 GW of offshore wind energy goals by 2035.

“Putting them into law is critical to prevent any potential for future backsliding on our climate commitments,” he said. “And it also provides a more stable regulatory environment. … We support codifying the 7.5-GW wind target, which currently just exists as an executive order, so that there’s certainty New Jersey will complete all of its planned offshore wind solicitations.”

Backing Microgrids, Low-carbon Concrete

Also Thursday, the Senate Economic Growth Committee voted 5-0 to back a bill, S3593, that would authorize the creation of a program to develop six electric microgrids around the state to provide power to charge medium- and heavy-duty EVs. The bill has yet to go before the full Assembly or Senate.

The program, to be created by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority in consultation with the Board of Public Utilities and Department of Environmental Protection, would require the authority to seek proposals for the creation one microgrid in each of the six utilities that serve the state.

The Senate Environment and Energy Committee backed two clean energy bills Thursday, including one, A2360, that would require electric utilities to charge “residential rates for service used by residential customers for electric vehicle charging at charging stations” in parking garages or other parking spaces tied to residential units.

While the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, the South Jersey Chamber of Commerce and New Jersey Utilities Association opposed the bill, NRDC submitted comments in favor, as did the New Jersey Apartment Association. The Assembly passed the bill 68-4 in June.

The committee also backed a legislation, S3732, that would provide corporation business tax credits to concrete producers that provide more than 50 cubic yards of “low embodied carbon concrete” to a project built under contract with a state agency. Low-embodied means the concrete was made with a process that creates low carbon emissions. (See New Jersey Lawmakers Back Low-carbon Concrete.)

The producer could receive a credit valued up to 8% of the cost of the concrete, and the cumulative total of all the credits issued under the bill in the state could not exceed $10 million. The committee backed the bill 4-1.

Sen. Linda Greenstein (D), who sponsored the bill, said the aim is to encourage investment by New Jersey’s concrete manufacturers in the “latest low-embodied carbon concrete manufacturing techniques.” That would “increase supply and competition while building the infrastructure necessary for New Jersey to be at the forefront of this cutting-edge effort to reduce carbon emissions of construction materials,” she said.