Move Forward or Stay in Place (part 2)

Or Move Forward?

 The coming Clayville Generating Station 1, in Vineland has been described as "integral to the future of the Vineland Municipal Utilities." But is it? Are any of these planned natural gas plants integral to our future? Government bodies pushing for natural gas facilities argue from the standpoint of energy security, but this is based on false assumptions that the energy we generate in NJ is the only energy we can use. Our utilities buy from a centralized grid and then distribute it to us. If my undergrad notes are correct, electricity attenuates to uselessness by the time it has traveled about 400 miles. That gives us a BIG area from which to draw electricity. In an excellent article covering the Oyster Creek and B.L. England plants, Braden Campbell of the Press of Atlantic City points out that only rarely (the worst parts of this winter's severe cold snap, for example) did BL England operate at full capacity. We don't need all that excess production for 95% of the year.

That being said, we will at some point need to add to our state's energy capacity. Since it probably won't be of the phased-out nuclear variety, we have a few choices. The clear sweetheart of the moment is Natural Gas. In the last post I mentioned a number of plants that are either in their final planning stages or already under construction. Yes. Natural gas is cheap. But that's because no one seems to be worrying about those pesky little externalities. Externalities like the disposal of the toxic chemical slurry that is fracking waste water. Currently the solution is to throw it into open air pits with a plastic barrier the only thing standing between waste and groundwater. Activists have passed local ordinances in a number of NJ towns banning fracking waste (full disclosure: I was part of a college group that proposed one of these ordinances) and even gotten fracking waste bans through both arms of the state legislature. Then Christie vetoed the bill. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance going on there.*

The rush to build these natural gas plants is even more puzzling given the advances our state is making in renewable energies. The U.S. Department of Energy began accepting the nation's first bids for offshore wind in February and the first three developers of NJ offshore wind were awarded a combined $47 million in early May. Along with a couple of sites in RI, VA, and OR, NJ is pioneering energy technology that with current technology could unlock more than 4,000 gigawatts of renewable energy nationally. In addition to our wind advantage, NJ is way ahead when it comes to solar. We are second only to the behemoth that is California in number of solar installations statewide. What's more, a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) suggests solar and wind prices will continue to plummet and that they will be cost competitive with natural gas by 2025. That's good news for a state that took the pains to invest in renewables early. The missing link in all of this is large-scale renewable energy storage, but the first commercial companies are making a go (and with plenty of money to be made, that field will be in a good state by 2025, for sure).

So again, I ask, why the rush to build natural gas plants? That missing capacity is not missed dearly. In just a few short years we'll be ready to truly move forward with our energy infrastructure, rather than burden South Jersey with gas plants that won't be cost competitive in two decades.

*Note about natural gas plants: Not all plants run on gas extracted through fracking. The BL England would have been one example, allegedly. Still, there's that silly GHG emission thing to worry about. Also, NJ, to my knowledge, does not have a good store of natural gas. The ban would prevent externalities from big gas states like PA from being dumped in New (probably South) Jersey.