By Matt Rooney
Six power plants closed during Phil Murphy’s almost concluded tenure as New Jersey governor, Save Jerseyans, and none of them were replaced. Democrats including incoming Governor Mikie Sherrill have yet to articulate how they’ll tackle higher utility bills without building any new ones. Stay tuned.
But we got another depressing illustration of Phil Murphy’s legacy of energy failure this week when Governor Murphy declare a ‘state of emergency’ due to a disruption in the state’s supply of imported propane.
“As temperatures continue to drop, ensuring that every person has access to a safe, warm environment is essential,” explained Murphy. “I am declaring a State of Emergency to ensure that the approximately 186,000 New Jerseyans who rely on propane for home heating purposes can receive it without interruption. This Executive Order expands delivery capabilities to keep homes heated and families secure.”
Murphy’s executive order takes advantage of a federal waiver and enables commercial drivers to drive longer without taking a break. So that’s nice.
Meanwhile, what remains unexplored by most of the Media is the fact that a state of over 9 million souls is overly reliant on a single plant in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania to heat nearly 200,000 Garden State homes. Propane isn’t a natural resource; it’s created through extraction from natural gas and/or crude oil. There’s no reason why New Jersey shouldn’t have it own native processing capacity. Instead of developing propane capacity, Phil Murphy wasted the last eight years (and billions of dollars) pursuing the failed experiment that was offshore wind.
This isn’t just a propane supply problem. I recently ran through the many ways in which New Jersey has an unhealthy dependence on other states (notably Pennsylvania) for its power needs, a trend that took hold and accelerated during the Murphy Administration.
I have no expectation Mikie Sherrill will do anything to help, but we need to talk about it all the same. There’s always the next election, and we can’t leave our fellow residents out in the cold without putting up a fight.
