State leaders unite in energy initiatives

To bring regional energy initiatives to the federal level, academia, government and business united yesterday at the second Energy Security, Innovation and Sustainability Initiative regional summit in the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus.
The summit featured several University officials including President Richard L. McCormick, state officials, such as Gov. Jon S. Corzine, and business leaders who discussed the importance of uniting the three sectors of society to improve the nation’s energy plans.
Corzine, an invited keynote speaker, said the state is moving toward cleaner energy, including wind, solar, co-generational and geothermal power.
“These alternative energy efforts … recognize that there is an economic opportunity [and] at the same time that we need to be moving to provide for energy security, independence and sustainability,” Corzine said.
McCormick said it is important for academia to provide research, such as the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Social Policy’s study on climate change, reporting that eight of 10 New Jersey residents say they understand global warming fairly well.
“Our faculty, students and staff are actively engaged in laboratories, in classrooms and in the fields to both combat the potentially devastating consequences of global warming and explore the exciting potential alternative energies,” he said.
The goal of the ESIS initiative is to improve national energy security and sustainability through the private sector.
“The intent is to develop a total higher action agenda to drive private sector development for sustainable energy solutions and to create new markets, industries and jobs,” said President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Shirley Ann Jackson.
The summit hosted a panel of experts who described ESIS’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative program — the only mandatory, market-based effort in the nation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said Jeanne Fox, president of the State of New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
RGGI is off to a terrific start and will help the state in its efforts, Corzine said.
“We’re about get started in the same kind of effective programs when we go to wind power off the coast. Hopefully we’ll have as much as 1,000 kilowatts by 2013,” Corzine said. “We are looking to have 3,000 by 2020.”
RGGI began in 2005 with only seven states, but now it includes 10 Northeastern states, including New Jersey, Fox said.
A reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is important as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere becomes absorbed in the ocean and stays there a long time, affecting the global climate, she said.
One of RGGI’s goals is to cap emissions, resulting in a 10 percent emissions decrease from the outset of the program, said Jared Snyder, assistant commissioner for Air Resources, Climate Change and Energy of the New York State Department of Environment Conservation.
“Another important goal of RGGI is to create a carbon price and a market for carbon, and again, that would be done for the first time,” Snyder said. “The idea is to get businesses to start to consider what effect their emissions have to incorporate it into their plan.”
RGGI creates this market and carbon price for electric power generators at their “allowance auctions,” where companies buy, sell and trade carbon dioxide emission allowances, the amount of the greenhouse gas the companies can emit, Snyder said.
It is the first cap-and-trade program in the world to do so, and the past three auctions have been very successful in keeping the price of carbon dioxide stable, between $3.00 and $3.50, he said.
“The auction also returns the value of the allowances to the public,” Snyder said. “Those revenues are reinvesting in green energy programs that reduces the cost of the project to the public.”
Another important goal of RGGI is to serve as a model for federal action, he said. The initiative was not designed as a long-term solution, but only to serve for 10 years.
“We expected that there would be a federal program within that time,” Snyder said. “If not, RGGI will re-evaluate its role.”
The ESIS released the 100-Day Energy Action Plan in September that outlined the steps the president should take to move the nation forward in terms of energy security within his first 100 days in office, Jackson said.
“The ESIS can focus on the steps the United States can take to strengthen industry competitiveness and use that as energy security,” she said.
Yesterday’s summit was the second of four regional summits held throughout the year, Jackson said. The fourth summit will be held in September in Washington, D.C., and will describe the initiative’s final results on energy efficiency.
The ESIS is a part of the Council on Competitiveness, a national group that unites universities, businesses and government to provide expertise to change federal policy, said Council on Competitiveness President Deborah Wince-Smith.
McCormick said the University is also making strides in creating a greener state.
“As New Jersey’s state university, Rutgers has a responsibility to partner with the state and the nation to advance technology and public policies needed to achieve these ambitious goals to create a healthy planet and a robust economy,” McCormick said.
One of the University’s initiatives include the new seven-acre solar farm on Livingston campus, which will generate 10 percent of the campus’ electricity and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1,200 tons a year, McCormick said.

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