Well as the white House eyes big changes to environmental rules and regulations, New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities is preparing to release a draft of the Murphy administration's updated Energy Master plan.

It's a blueprint for transitioning the state to a 100% clean energy economy by 2050.

That's something the governor vowed to do when he first took office.

Business, labor and environmental groups got to weigh in on the state's progress and next steps.

During an hours long virtual meeting Thursday where they learned the state has made a lot of progress in areas like reducing emissions from the transportation and building sectors and boosting community solar.

But the state will have to ramp up new policies at a much quicker speed if it wants to hit its target.

To talk about it, I'm joined by Ed Fantastic, executive director of the new Jersey League of Conservation Voters, and Erick Ford, president of the New Jersey Energy Coalition, and Erick Ford.

Ed Potosnak.

Good to see you both.

Ed, let me start with you.

What did you hear in the presentation yesterday?

That made you feel like New Jersey's on the right track toward achieving some of these goals?

Yeah, I no, the energy master plan is a really important roadmap for us and how we're going to get clean energy that's affordable, that can help us to create good local jobs right here in new Jersey that can't be outsourced.

Instead of importing dirty oil and gas energy from neighboring states, and also help us to have energy independence and combat climate change, which is, you know, wreaking havoc last year was a record year, the hottest year on record.

The year before, that was the hottest year on record.

We're seeing our seas rise, all kinds of devastation and destruction.

We have battling forest fires right now in new Jersey, all fueled by our addiction, as George Bush said, to oil.

And we need to move away from that.

And we can.

And actually, clean energy is cheaper than oil and gas.

Solar is the cheapest energy right now, and it saves money on the back end avoiding these, these climate impacts.

Eric, I mean, the affordability issue is one that always comes up.

And in particular, right now, given the rising costs of energy, what we know is coming down the pike for, homeowners, renters, in the next few months in terms of what it will cost to cool and heat their homes.

What, did you take from this plan, and what do you feel needs to be shifted?

Listening to it, you know, I think one of the things that needs to be heavily focused on is making sure reliability is there, and affordability is a part of it, right.

Making sure that, as we go down this the path that is currently presented that we're taking in consideration of making sure the lights are staying on, make sure the heat's staying on.

You know, 73% of the homes are heated by natural gas today, right?

If you were to tell someone, you know, you need to switch over the first question of water cost, right?

What?

That's.

What does that cost like?

Additionally, if you think about now where we're at with the market, obviously you're asking about the high prices, how it handle that.

You know, we didn't get here overnight.

It didn't happen in the last year.

It was it was a slow walk that then in the last year became fast.

And there were several issues, several reasons behind that that can be debated and thought about.

But the market construct that we have right now is really the one that we have to deal with.

You saw the capacity prices going up, which in a sense, when you're dealing with a market like that, that means then that's a signal to builders to go ahead and, you know, think about what else we need to be bringing on.

You know, one thing to think about in the energy master plan is the amount of generation we've lost in the last seven years, which is about 40 100MW of power, you know, and now we import 40 300MW of power.

So, you know, thinking about how do we build generation state, how do we get that built quickly?

What's that short term mid-term?

A long term plan going to look like.

I mean, to Eric's point, demand, with outsourcing in sourcing some of our energy needs, this plant says, hey, listen, if we're going to get there, we need to significantly ramp up electrification across pretty much all of our sectors and ensure that the grid can handle that.

Are we on the right path?

There's no doubt the right way forward is clean energy because it's the cheapest.

In fact, the last auction that's jacking up our rates almost 20% across the state is, a result of the fact that the regional utility grid denied clean energy projects that are cheaper from coming online.

In fact, if 30% of those projects had been approved, the increases would have been 63% less.

And New Jersey's waiting for 80%.

Excuse me, 80 projects to come online and 96% of them are clean energy projects that are cheaper.

The people who vote are the oil and gas companies that are producing this energy.

It's a secret vote.

It never gets released and they vote on their own projects, which are more expensive.

And we pay the price on the front end on our bill, and then afterwards for the devastating impacts that it has to our health has my cancer, heart disease.

And then also for climate change.

And we're not creating good jobs in our state.

This is power coming in from outside.

Speaking jobs, Eric, I mean, one of the progress numbers that we got was if electrification does, speed up at the rate that the plan calls for, we'd see a net of about 54,000 jobs.

So, a good thing for, labor groups, or are you saying we've already got, more to do to support our current energy infrastructure?

Well, so with that question, do we have enough, you know, adding more people to to the workforce is very important.

I know over the years that I've been a part of this, there's always been a concern and need and desire to get more people into the industry.

You know, there's a large significant amount of people that work in the energy industry today who can retire today, right?

So not just on traditional, but getting people involved.

And the other areas are are very important.

It's a great growth opportunity.

You know, energy is the number one driver of the economy, right?

The jobs that micro, economic impacts that happen.

It's very important.

Yeah.

Let me just get very quickly.

Final thoughts.

Quick final thoughts and I'll start with you just on the barriers, that you see ahead.

Well, I mean, Trump's clean energy ban.

It's a big barrier.

They're doubling down on oil and gas, and they're looking to line the pockets of oil and gas.

CEOs, make those shareholders rich.

We've got secret votes happening in a utility grid that doubles down on things that are more expensive.

We we're being forced as ratepayers to pay for infrastructure that we don't need.

That's very expensive for the oil and gas industry.

People really have to speak up and say we want clean energy that protects our health, creates these good local jobs, which are careers in our state and also attacks climate change and addresses that and creates energy independence.

Very quickly, your final thoughts?

Yeah.

My thoughts are you look at what it cost to build this stuff.

These days.

That is the number one driver.

You saw it worse.

They pulled out.

And it's based on economics, right?

And that was before, the new administration.

So thinking about that affordability and reliability, I think the number one thing is thinking about how do we make these make it affordable to build the projects permitting quicker and getting the projects online.

So I think those those are areas that really focus on Erick Ford with the New Jersey Energy Coalition and Ed Potosnak neck with the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.

Thank you so much to you both.

Thank you.

Thank you.