Archive for category Policy
New C-PACE Bill Passes in New Jersey
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Climate Change, Editorial, Energy & Environment, News, Policy, State on Tuesday, June 29, 2021
After almost ten years of concerted advocacy, New Jersey’s C-PACE law is finally being amended to make it actually usable by municipalities and commercial property owners to limit their carbon emissions, save money, and create new jobs and opportunities in local communities. While it will still be a number of months before the NJ Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) issues rules and guidelines, the passage of the new bill (A2374/S1953) is a major milestone in NJ’s commitment to meaningful climate action.
Here’s the press release posted by New Jersey PACE and its affiliated sites yesterday:
The Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy program, already approved in 37 states and D.C., with active programs in 24 states, is headed to the Governor’s desk for signature
Trenton, N.J. — On June 24 the New Jersey Legislature approved A2374/S1953 with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities in both the Assembly and Senate. The C-PACE (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) bill establishes the Garden State C-PACE Program, to be developed and overseen by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA).
The bill was sponsored by Assemblyman Raj Mukherji (D-Jersey City) and Senators Bob Smith (D-Piscataway) and Kip Bateman (R-Somerset). This represents the culmination of a ten-year effort by New Jersey PACE (NJPACE), a 501c3 nonprofit organization, to amend NJ’s unworkable 2011 PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) statute.
The legislation establishes a program that, through a municipal ordinance, allows commercial property owners to privately finance energy efficiency, renewables, and resiliency projects and repay them over time through a special assessment on the property tax bill, similar to a sidewalk or sewer assessment. These projects are 100% financed with private sector capital—no taxpayer or public monies are used.
New Stormwater Fees the Perfect Opportunity for PACE
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Energy & Environment, Finances, News, Policy, State, Stormwater, Sustainability, Sustainable Business on Monday, February 18, 2019
[Reposted from NewJerseyPACE.org]
February 14, 2019: NJ’s new stormwater utility bill (A2694/S1073) authorizes municipalities to collect fees on parking lots and other impervious surfaces to fund improvements to failing stormwater systems. But it has many commercial property owners concerned that they will now face significant new charges on their property. If the legislature and the Murphy Administration want to address these concerns in a meaningful way, PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) is the obvious answer.
PACE can provide 100% long-term financing for projects designed to reduce stormwater runoff by building retention systems, green roofs, and permeable paving. These improvements add to the value of the property and allow the owner to avoid some or all of the fees likely to be charged by the new utilities. When coupled with other clean energy and resiliency improvements, PACE projects are typically cashflow positive from day one. The capital is invested in the property by private lenders, but is off-balance sheet to the property owner, and the interest and other costs can often be treated as operating expenses. There is no public money involved. The municipality simply makes the Special Assessment mechanism available to the property owner, and provides a pass-through for the repayments.
Sounding the Alarm
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Carbon Pollution, Climate Change, Economy, Editorial, Energy & Environment, Finances, Global, National, Policy, Politics, Sea Level Rise on Sunday, January 6, 2019
New observations show that climate change is already harming us in a wide variety of ways. Possible Planet is looking at what we can do about it, from rewarding carbon capture on a global scale to refreezing the Arctic.
Mounting Evidence of Harm to Humanity and the Biosphere
Climate change—or, as Dr. Janice Kirsh prefers to call it, climate disruption1—is already upon us. The effects are real, costly, and increasingly measurable. Amongst several other dire warnings issued near the end of 2018, the latest report of the Lancet Countdown notes that “Vulnerability to extremes of heat has steadily risen since 1990 in every region, with 157 million more people exposed to heatwave events in 2017, compared with 2000,” and “153 billion hours of labour were lost in 2017 because of heat, an increase of more than 62 billion hours since 2000.” Moreover,
The direct effects of climate change extend beyond heat to include extremes of weather. In 2017, a total of 712 extreme weather events resulted in US$326 billion in economic losses, almost triple the total losses of 2016.2
Add to this the “excess costs” of rising sea levels, and rising levels of ocean acidity; the agricultural impacts and the spread of vector-borne and water-borne diseases; and the broad range of public health impacts—and it’s clear that today’s costs and consequences alone are reason enough to sound the alarm.
But the planet also faces other imminent disasters:
- the loss of natural habitat and biodiversity, precipitating what is widely considered “the sixth mass extinction event”
- the widespread loss of soil fertility threatening agricultural production
- and wars, conflicts, and mass migrations that are already being precipitated by environmental changes
Though some people are still apparently unwilling to believe that climate change is real, or that humans are the major cause of it, these very real economic and biophysical costs are of increasing concern to global policymakers, public health professionals, the insurance industry, and even the military. And ironically it’s perhaps the risk to the economy, even more than to the biosphere, that will drive a meaningful response.
Fighting Climate Change in Donald Trump’s America
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Climate Change, Editorial, Energy & Environment, National, Policy, Politics on Monday, November 14, 2016
Listening to Trump’s victory speech early Wednesday morning (and much of what he has said since then) has led many to wonder if the entire election campaign was a con, and we’re now going to see a new, more humane, Donald Trump as President. “Would the real Donald Trump stand up?” is a question several pundits have begun to ask. And in his first statement after the election, President Obama noted Trump’s “new tone,” and hoped it would continue.
Here’s a key excerpt from Trump’s speech:
I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be President for all of Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.
Global Climate Deal and the Missing Link
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Carbon Pollution, Climate Change, Energy & Environment, Global, Policy on Saturday, January 24, 2015
The climate deal fleshed out in Lima, Peru, is that all countries can set their own climate goals [1,2,3]. But will this be effective in preventing dangerous greenhouse gas emissions? Very unlikely, writes Delton Chen (Geo-Hydrologist, Civil Engineer):
During the past 250 years of industrial and technological revolution, the primary catalyst for innovation and the fundamental driver of economic growth has been the availability of fossil fuels (i.e. coal, oil and gas). To avoid extremely dangerous climate change, the global economic system must be re-organised at a fundamental level, and the new order must include a social transformation that grows exponentially; otherwise the required mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be too slow to avoid a climate catastrophe.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was put into effect in 1994, and civilisation officially acknowledged that it was ‘addicted’ to fossil fuels. The ultimate aim of the UNFCCC is to prevent “…dangerous human interference with the climate system”[4]. The recent UNFCCC’s meeting in Lima, Peru, provides the latest update on civilisation’s de-carbonisation program, but the results of the Lima meeting signify global action will be further delayed given that nations are only obliged to make voluntary commitments.
Crowdfunding for PACE in New Jersey
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Economy, Editorial, Energy & Environment, Local, News, NJ Shore, Policy, State, Sustainability, Sustainable Business on Thursday, August 7, 2014
The challenges we face in New Jersey as a result of climate change are significant, and so therefore are the opportunities. The experience of Superstorm Sandy showed us just how ill-prepared we are for the more frequent recurrence of extreme weather; and how important it is that we set an example for taking action to mitigate our own greenhouse gas emissions, as other states are doing around us. And there’s also no doubt about the urgency of it — as you can see from this remarkable video:
Read the rest of this entry »
Keep Your Hands Off My Obamacare
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Editorial, Health Care, National, Policy on Thursday, September 19, 2013
Some Republicans in Congress are determined to “de-fund” Obamacare by holding the government’s entire budget hostage. I beg to differ from those in the Tea Party who are supporting this move.
Our personal story is that we have enjoyed company-supplied health care insurance up to the point where my wife got laid off in 2012, and since then have paid for COBRA at $1500 a month to maintain these benefits. This ends in November, and we fully intend to apply for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
This name says a lot — it’s private insurance that is expected to be affordable and held to important consumer-protection standards. We haven’t signed up yet, and we’ll be the first to complain if the system does not work properly when it’s launched in October. But there are currently a lot of good software engineers and designers working for the federal government, and we’re expecting to see any kinks ironed out as soon as they’re discovered.
Seeking Sustainable Growth in the Wake of Sandy
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Analysis, Energy & Environment, Local, Policy, State, Sustainability on Sunday, December 30, 2012
The Center for Regenerative Community Solutions and Regenerative Community Ventures, Inc. have recently circulated a position paper on “Laying a Foundation for Sustainable Growth in New Jersey in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy” with policy makers and community leaders in the state. Here is a final version, and several excerpts. The authors are co-founders of the Center for Leadership in Sustainability, the Sustainable Leadership Forum, and Acumen Technology Group, LLC. Jonathan Cloud is Senior Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Managing Partner, Acumen Technology Group, LLC.Victoria Zelin is Principal, Regenerative Community Ventures, Inc., a licensee of Unified Field Corporation.
Superstorm Sandy has dramatically altered NJ’s economy as well as its geography for years to come. While there may be a short-term “bounce” from the money spent on reconstruction, the thinking about how that rebuilding should be carried out is already moving very quickly toward the view that it needs to be substantially more hurricane-proof and disaster-resistant, more resilient, and — in a word — more sustainable.
This paper sets out some considerations and recommendations for creating a foundation for sustainable growth in New Jersey, describes some of the initiatives we are taking through our new nonprofit organization, the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions, and makes specific suggestions for policies and programs for state and local government to support these and similar initiatives from other organizations.
What’s In a Name? – Help Needed
Posted by in Energy & Environment, National, Policy on Thursday, February 25, 2010
I need your help. For discussion purposes please assume the following:- We need to phase out the use of fossil fuels.
- We need to incentivize people to burn less fossil fuel and one way to do this is to increase the prices of fossil fuels.
- An easy way to do this is to impose a tax on fossil fuels.
- The specific proposal here is to impose a tax on the CO2 that will be produced when the fuel is burned, and to collect this tax at the source of the fuel: mine, well, or port of entry for imported oil and gas. The tax will start low and increase by a predetermined amount each year. All the revenue from this tax, except for a small administrative cost, will be returned directly and promptly to the public. The revenue will be divided equally among all legal residents and checks will be sent out in December and June. [Alaska does this for oil pipeline revenue and sends out a check each June.]
Off Fossil Fuels by 2040: Proposed Democratic Resolution for Feb 1 Meeting
Posted by Jonathan Cloud in Democrats, Energy & Environment, National, News, Policy on Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Bernards Township Democratic Committee Resolution No. 2010-01
A RESOLUTION urging Congress and the President of the United States to enact legislation to phase out the use of all fossil fuels by 2040, and urging the President of the United States to declare 2010 a year for national dialog on this program.
WHEREAS, the Bernards Township Democratic Committee is a duly organized local political committee under the laws of the State of New Jersey;
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