New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has nominated a member of his staff and an NRG Energy executive to replace two sitting commissioners on the state’s Board of Public Utilities as the agency implements his reshaping of the state’s energy sector.
Christine Guhl Sadovy, Murphy’s cabinet secretary who has a history of working in clean energy, will replace Murphy appointee Robert Gordon, whose term expires Mar. 15, 2023.
Commissioner Bob Gordon | NJ BPUMarian Abdou, managing senior counsel at NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG), will replace Dianne Solomon, who was nominated by Republican Gov. Chris Christie in 2013 and whose term expires in October 2024. Abdou has also worked at Direct Energy and Hess Corp.
The nominations require approval by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, which has yet to set a date to consider them, and the full Senate.
The changes come as the BPU works to implement some of Murphy’s most high-profile policies, among them aggressive efforts to create a state offshore wind industry, reduce transportation emissions through a dramatic expansion of electric vehicle use, and transition buildings away from natural gas heating and hot water appliances and towards electrification. The BPU is also faced with engineering an upgrade to the state grid necessitated by increased amounts of variable renewable generation.
The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on why the two existing commissioners were not reappointed. Members of the five-member board of commissioners serve six-year terms, with a salary of $175,000 and cannot hold another job. No more than three commissioners with the same party affiliation can serve on the board.
Closing Coal Plants
Sadovy joined the Murphy administration at the BPU, where she rose to the position of chief of staff to President Joseph L. Fiordaliso, according to her biography on the state website. She helped “spearhead” Murphy’s clean energy agenda, working on the governor’s 2019 Master Plan, the implementation of the 2018 Clean Energy Act and the development of the state’s EV incentive plan, according to the website.
She previously had spent five years advocating for clean energy policies at the New Jersey branch of the Sierra Club, where she worked on the Beyond Coal campaign, which seeks to close all the coal-fired plants in the U.S. Subsequent to that, Guhl Sadovy was political director for Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey and worked to help the election of pro-women’s health candidates, according to the site.
Abdou joined NRG in 2016 and has worked on a variety of commercial issues affecting the company’s generation assets and provided legal support to both the development and energy services groups, according to Murphy’s office. The company generates electricity and provides energy solutions and natural gas to millions of customers, according to the company website. NRG operates 10 natural gas plants, a nuclear plant, a solar plant and four coal plants, according to the site.
Abdou received her law degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from Rutgers University; she has worked at Day Pitney, Thacher Proffitt & Wood and ArentFox Schiff.
Advancing Clean Energy
Gordon, a Democrat who served 10 years as a state senator, is known as a policy wonk who on appointment to the board immersed himself in the details of energy issues; he is also known as someone who spoke his mind on occasion.
In one of his most notable comments, Gordon expressed frustration at the size of the subsidies awarded to PSEG’s three South New Jersey nuclear plants, in April 2021, saying he had hoped the company would agree to an award that was smaller than the maximum allowed under the law. “That never happened,” Gordon said at the time, but he nevertheless voted for the award. (See NJ Nukes Awarded $300 Million in ZECs.)
Commissioner Dianne Solomon | NJ BPUOne environmental advocate said Gordon may have spoken too frankly at some point, prompting his removal.
Gordon said it had been “a great privilege to advance Governor Murphy’s groundbreaking policies in clean energy.
“I look forward to continuing to shape policy in my next chapter,” said Gordon, who is also a trustee on the board of New Jersey Transit, the state mass transit agency. “I remain very interested in clean energy and hope to continue my involvement in the field.”
Solomon, a Republican who is serving her second term on the BPU board, is a former BPU president and member of the governor’s cabinet under Christie. She has on occasion bucked the board, questioning the pace of the state’s push into clean energy. On Feb. 17, she voted against awarding an easement needed to advance the state’s first offshore wind project, saying she did not believe the board had investigated the matter thoroughly enough. (See NJ BPU Grants Second Easement for OSW Project.)
She also has expressed concern about the cost of some of the governor’s renewable energy policies, especially the offshore wind projects. In August, she voted against the board accepting a report providing an estimate of the cost of implementing Murphy’s Energy Masterplan. She contended that it ignored key costs in implementing the plan and said “no one should contemplate using this study to inform policy decisions.”
Murphy nominated former Assemblywoman Maria Rodriguez-Gregg, to replace Solomon in April 2022, but later withdrew the nomination.