‘The subsidy required to make these complicated projects economically viable is insufficient’ under new BPU program.
While most everyone can agree that solar power development is one of the most important elements in achieving New Jersey’s renewable energy goals, not all parties have always agreed on where it should be built. Rooftops, carports, ground-mounted, agricultural land, etc. have all been debated as part of the state’s solar energy policy. However, solar power developments on landfills and other contaminated property are the projects that continually receive universal praise from all parties. In fact, in the Solar Act of 2012, the state Legislature included a specific section — known as subsection t — that was aimed at providing a streamlined review process and additional financial incentives for redeveloping contaminated properties (landfills, brownfields, and sites of historic fill) with utility-scale solar arrays.
This policy worked for many years. Not only did it allow for the deployment of hundreds of megawatts of utility-scale solar projects — all of which contributing to the state’s renewable energy goals — but it also provided for the redevelopment of contaminated properties, some of them EPA ”Superfund” sites. These contaminated properties are often drains, both financial and economic on local municipalities, counties, and the state. By providing sufficient incentives to allow these sites to be redeveloped with solar arrays, towns and counties were able to partner with developers to create green-energy and revenue-producing projects from what had been stagnant, unproductive, and problematic properties.
Returning these once-polluted sites back to productive uses, creating high-paying union labor construction jobs, returning abandoned or under-assessed properties to the tax rolls, and fighting climate change make these projects win-win-wins. A perfect example is the Mount Olive Solar Farm in Morris County. The Mount Olive Solar Farm is, in fact, the largest solar landfill in North America. When completed and interconnected next month, it will be the largest solar landfill ever developed, at 28.5 MW dc, enough to power over 4,000 homes.
The site, formerly known as Combe Fill North Landfill, was a notorious ”Superfund” site that had been abandoned by its prior owner and operator in the early 1980s. For nearly 40 years, the property was a blight on Mount Olive Township and the surrounding community.
Thanks to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities’ TREC solar incentive program, the site was redeveloped, through a partnership with a private developer and the local municipality — a project that won the Innovation in Governance Award for 2021. In November 2021, Gov. Phil Murphy visited the site and signed an important executive order that accelerated climate change action and state initiatives to decrease state-generated greenhouse-gas emissions by 50% by 2030, creating a stronger path to the goal of 100% by 2050. With the bustling construction of thousands of solar panels as a backdrop, Murphy stated that “now is the time for action” on climate change. Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette was also on hand extolling the virtues of converting landfills into a productive use such as renewable solar energy.
Unfortunately, solar landfills (and brownfields) will no longer be possible given the policy changes at the BPU. The successful TREC incentive program, which allowed for the redevelopment of landfills and brownfields under “subsection t” of the Solar Act of 2012, was closed by the BPU in August 2021. The BPU’s successor solar incentive program (known as “SuSI”) simply doesn’t work. In the first eight months of the SuSI program, not a single application has been submitted for a landfill or brownfield redevelopment project. Primarily, this is because the subsidy required to make these complicated projects economically viable is insufficient under the new program.
Even more worrying, projects that were submitted timely prior to the closure of the TREC program will not be able to meet required construction deadlines due to a multi-year interconnection moratorium established by PJM, the operator of the regional power grid. Effectively, due to this change in policy and incentive structure, the BPU will shut off hundreds of megawatts of worthy projects before they even get in the ground. This will mean the end of solar landfills and brownfields in New Jersey.
Thankfully, the Legislature has taken it upon itself to right this wrong. Bills (S-2732 and A-4089), sponsored by Sens. Nick Scutari and Bob Smith and Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo, will give deadline extensions to pending “subsection t” projects that are held up by the delays at PJM. Without this legislation, dozens of solar landfill and brownfield projects will die, along with thousands of construction jobs and nearly 500 MW dc of clean solar power. These bills are teed up for final votes in both houses. If New Jersey is going to meet its clean-energy goals, while at the same time promoting the equally important environmental initiative of redeveloping contaminated sites, the Legislature must pass this legislation now and the governor must sign it as soon as he gets it.
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