Gov. Murphy: No idea on cost of Green energy plan

By Aldo Williams

Chris Nelder is an energy investment consultant who co-authored the book, Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks.  In his writings, Nelder has pushed the “green” investment strategies of Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs.    
 
Nelder made the controversial argument that “the combined health, environmental, and climate benefits of a solar panel in New Jersey are fifteen times greater than those associated with one in Arizona.”  He argues that a “solar PV performs best in the sunny Southwest, and worst in New England. But by displacing coal, the combined benefits of a solar array in Ohio or New Jersey would be fifteen times greater than those that the same array would provide in Arizona, where clean-burning natural gas is the dominant ‘marginal’ fuel that a solar array would displace.”
 
He cites the co-author of a study, who wrote: “If you are interested in mitigating climate change and improving human health, you get significantly greater benefits from wind or solar in places like Pennsylvania, Indiana, or New Jersey.” 
 
So even if the use of solar panels in New Jersey results in poor energy performance that needs to be supported by taxpayer handouts, because of the state’s dependence on oil and coal, Nelder thinks it is worth it.  So why not simply replace this with, as Nelder puts it, “clean-burning natural gas”? 
 
A major force behind Governor Phil Murphy’s Energy Master Plan, in a recent article, investment consultant Chris Nelder admits the Murphy administration has NO IDEA how much his Green Master Plan will cost taxpayers and consumers.   Writing in an environmental media site, Nelder had this to say…
 
The U.S. solar industry has spent a decade working to streamline and reduce the "soft costs" of projects, which include less-visible expenses in areas like customer acquisition, permitting, financing and installation. Now it's time for the growing EV charging industry to do the same.
 
A new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute provides clarity on the cost ranges for components, such as Level 2 and direct-current (DC) fast charger stations, and offers recommendations for reducing overall EV charging infrastructure costs.
 
“There’s been a real lack of knowledge out there about what this stuff costs or what it should cost,” Chris Nelder, co-author of the report and manager of RMI’s EV-Grid Integration initiative, told GTM.
 
To get a clearer picture of the cost of EV charging infrastructure today, Nelder and co-author Emily Rogers conducted two dozen interviews with representatives from across the industry, including utilities, hardware providers, software providers, network charging operators and transit agencies.
 
The research revealed that costs for charging infrastructure components ranged from $2,500 up to $7,210 for a Level 2 commercial charger and from $20,000 up to $35,800 for a 50-kilowatt DC fast charger.
 
In the report, titled Reducing EV Charging Infrastructure Costs, the authors analogize EV charging infrastructure’s trajectory to that of solar.
 
“The cost of EV chargers is following a progression that is very similar to that seen in the solar sector over the past decade," the report says. These days, soft costs are "frequently cited as more significant cost drivers" than physical components, as the cost of charging-station hardware comes down…
 
But the reality today is that such soft costs "are poorly understood, very hard to quantify, and almost entirely undocumented in the literature," the report notes.
 
…Uncertainty over the costs associated with EV charging infrastructure "really slows things down, especially when you don’t have the right information or you don’t think you have solid or correct information," Nelder said.
 
You can read the full article here: 

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/ev-charging-infrastructure-has-a-soft-costs-problem

 
While Wall Street investment giants like Goldman Sachs seek to secure government backing for their schemes, the Murphy administration is pushing ahead with its green energy master plan without knowing the costs.   
 

Governor Murphy’s policy seems to be to build it and let someone else pay.  That someone else is the taxpayer. 
 
We should hold our horses until costs are better understood, easier to quantify, and better documented.  Until Governor Murphy’s own energy plan consultants have answers to their own questions, his plan should be put on hold.  
  

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(George Orwell, aka Eric Blair)

Quoted by Chris Hedges, in his bestseller, “Death of the Liberal Class" (2010).