A bill that would require all electricity sold in New Jersey to be clean energy by 2035 has been delayed by concerns from environmentalists, labor groups and solar developers, according to the bill’s sponsor.

The measure would accelerate the state’s current goal of requiring 50% clean electricity by 2030.

Bill S2978 sponsor Sen. Bob Smith (D), who chairs the influential Senate Environment and Energy Committee, said he had hoped to bring the bill to the committee before the summer recess at the end of this month. But a triad of concerns raised by different groups proved too difficult to resolve, and the bill won’t be heard until after the November election, Smith said.

“We have issues right and left,” Smith said. “Everybody wants a bigger bill … So we’re trying to balance all the equities, get everybody in the room, lock the door and come up with a solution.”

Smith’s initial version of S2978 would have modified the state’s renewable portfolio standard, which presently includes the 50% by 2030 target, with a new requirement for 100% clean energy by 2045.

But the latest version of the bill notes the state is “on track” to generate 75% of its energy with “non-emitting” resources such as wind, nuclear and solar by 2025, on the way to 84% by 2030. The bill would now require the state to update clean electricity targets to 70% by June 2026, 85% by June 2030 and 100% by June 2035.

The bill seeks to establish in law a goal that Gov. Phil Murphy (D) laid out in a February executive order requiring 100% of the state’s electricity to be derived from clean sources by Jan. 1, 2035, preventing a future governor from altering or revoking the target. While Democrats have in recent years held both legislative chambers, the governor’s office has swung back and forth between the two parties for the last 40 years.

“The current governor is a pretty green governor,” Smith said. “And a new executive may not feel as sanguine about renewable energy.”

Competing Agendas

The bill is vigorously backed by the environmental groups, several of which held a press conference in Trenton Thursday morning with two Democratic legislators — Sen. Linda R. Greenstein and Assemblyman Robert J. Karabinchak — to advance the bill even as some environmentalists seek to remove elements they don’t like. They are particularly concerned the legislation would allow trash-incinerating plants to still be considered Class 2 renewable energy and continue operating, even though they add to pollution.

Press conference participants from the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council and New Jersey Progressive Equitable Energy Coalition urged legislators to support the bill and take other steps to accelerate the shift to clean energy.

“Climate change is not slowing down,” said Tom Gilbert, co-executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, who cited as an example the thick smoke and fumes that shrouded New Jersey Wednesday and Thursday because of wildfires in Canada. “This is climate change, and unfortunately it’s only going to get worse unless we act decisively.”

But Ray Cantor, deputy chief government affairs officer for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, one of the state’s largest business groups, expressed concerns but said he couldn’t comment in detail because the bill is still being redrafted and he hasn’t seen the latest version.

“We are extremely skeptical of creating any artificial deadlines for taking such major actions, especially when experience and simple physics has shown that you cannot run an electrical grid on renewables alone,” he said. “In all likelihood this bill will have New Jersey ratepayers subsidize projects in other states to buy credits just to say we met a renewable standard. This is not good policy, and it will be costly.”

Smith said solar developers have pushed for changes to the bill that would resolve some issues they have with past incentive programs created by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. Electrical workers are concerned that in reaching for the 100% clean energy goal, the effort will “somehow result in the outsourcing of a significant number of energy jobs,” he said, adding, “That’s not the case.”

“We’ve had some of the best minds in the energy business analyze this, and they are all coming back with the same conclusion — which is this will increase jobs, labor-related jobs in New Jersey, by a huge factor,” he said. “You remember that anything over a megawatt has to be done with union labor.”

Burning Trash

Smith said the environmentalists have concerns because they want to use the bill as “vessel to put resource recovery facilities [trash-burning plants] out of business.”

That view was reinforced by Allison McLeod, policy director for the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, who said her group strongly supports the 100% clean electricity standard but wants the state to move past “fossil fuel emitting power generation and into an equitable and just clean energy future.”

McLeod said the group is concerned that the current version of the bill allows trash burners to continue operating. The state has four such incinerators in Camden, Newark, Westville and Rahway.

“Trash Incineration is not clean energy, and it shouldn’t be considered clean energy,” she said. “When we’re defining clean energy in our renewable portfolio standards, we need to make sure that we’re defining things as truly renewable and truly clean, and for us that does not include trash incineration.”

The issue is particularly important, she said, because incinerators are frequently located in overburdened communities that have historically dealt with the “effects of fossil fuel and dirty energy production.”

Smith said the incinerators receive millions of dollars in state subsidies, and the operators argue that if they were shut down, the state would generate more methane, a greenhouse gas, because the trash would go to landfills instead of being burnt. He said he tried to adjust the bill with an amendment that would require the incinerators to meet emissions standards set by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection or else lose the subsidies.

However, the environmental justice community “is not happy with that at this point,” he said, adding that he questioned whether a bill to revise the state’s renewable energy portfolio standards is the “right vehicle” for an effort to shut down trash incinerators.