This all could have been avoided. We could have continued reducing emissions while providing affordable, reliable energy. But our elected leaders decided to enact their own political agenda calling it policy while ignoring the facts and putting us in a situation where we are now importing 1/3 of our energy from other states.

So now that we see rising demand (as anyone but the NJ BPU predicted) and not enough supply to meet it, let’s look at the federal decision made this week regarding coal:

To recap:

• For the last 10 years, NJ made it nearly impossible to build new natural gas and nuclear power plants.
• NJ did that while taking several existing plants offline with nothing to replace them other than “plans”.
• And now that those plans have fallen through time and time again, we are seeing efforts federally to reboot coal to keep the lights on because state’s aren’t producing enough to meet demand.

So in the end, the same people who opine about clean energy are the very reason that coal is making a comeback in the United States. But tell us again how seriously you are taking the problem.