NJ Transit scraps plan for gas-fired backup power plant, heartening environmental justice advocates
New Jersey’s public transit agency is scrapping plans for a backup power plant that would have been fueled by natural gas, heartening environmental justice advocates who targeted it and several other proposed power plants in largely minority areas
New Jersey's public transit agency said Friday it is scrapping plans for a backup power plant that would have been fueled by natural gas, heartening environmental justice advocates who targeted it and several other power plants in largely minority areas.
NJ Transit said it is redirecting $503 million in federal funding that would have been used to build the backup system, called the TransitGrid Microgrid Central Facility, to other resiliency projects scattered around northern and central New Jersey.
The backup plant was to have been built in Kearny, a low-income community near Newark, the state's largest city and home to another hotly fought plan for a similar backup power project for a sewage treatment plant.
“An intensive review of industry proposals for the MCF revealed that the project was not financially feasible,” NJ Transit said in a statement. “Further, since this project was originally designed, multiple improvements to the affected power grid have been enacted that have functionally made the MCF as envisioned at that time much less necessary than other critical resiliency projects.”
The agency said a utility, PSE&G, has made significant investments in power grid resiliency throughout the region that has greatly increased power reliability.
The move was hailed by opponents who said it would have added yet another polluting project to communities that are already overburdened with them — despite a state law signed in 2020 by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy that is
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