by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

July 31, 2008

The American Jewish Committee is urging New Jersey Jews to take an active role in promoting energy conservation, reducing oil dependency, and stepping up the fight against global warming.

Speaking July 24 at a gathering at the NJ State Association of Jewish Federations, the AJC’s regional director, Allyson Gall, urged attendees to support a series of far-reaching environmental policies that AJC has advocated on a statewide and national level.

Gall is pressing Jewish organizations to study and support a proposed Energy Master Plan for New Jersey aimed at reducing the warming effects of greenhouse gases, conserving clean energy, and eliminating dependence on foreign oil by 2050.

“The community relations committees and the federations should be taking a stand on these issues,” she said. “We really do believe it is a foreign policy and energy imperative to get ourselves off Arab oil and be energy independent. Certainly, working on the issue of greenhouse emissions is a Jewish issue, too; it’s tikun olam. That may be trite, but it’s true.”

After the meeting, association executive director Jacob Toporek said he would review the master plan.

“I am sure we are all interested in energy but we haven’t seen the full proposal,” he said. “We are open and we are listening but there has not been a determination.”

Toporek said his coalition of CRC and federation executives has to weigh new environmental initiatives against other legislative items on their agenda.

“There is a push for more active healthcare reform. A couple of CRCs are taking a look at poverty as an issue. There is Darfur. It is all big stuff, but the question is, where can you play them in terms of priorities? We are open to all of these issues,” he said.

Lori Price Abrams, director of the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ Community Relations Committee, said the items raised by Gall would be discussed when the CRC meets after the summer.

“We are very concerned about conservation, and energy issues are very important to the Jewish community,” she said.

The AJC has been promoting energy independence for some 30 years, at first as part of its efforts to promote a secure Israel and strong U.S. pro-Israel policy.

In recent years it has increased the environmental aspects of its energy agenda.

Among the items on the AJC’s agenda is determining “if we have enough energy for the people of New Jersey and that it is affordable and sustainable while we are reducing greenhouse gases,” Gall explained.

By cleanly producing both heat and electricity in a process known as cogeneration — along with increasing solar and wind power and the development of the battery-powered car — Gall said, she believes “it is going to be enough so that we won’t have to provide any new traditional power plants in New Jersey.”

That would ease the concerns of environmental groups that oppose further development of coal-fired or nuclear-power plants.

Gall said, “A lot of little companies are ready to provide alternate energy” and “they are bursting to get a piece of the action. There also needs to be legislation to say new buildings have to be more energy-conscious and old buildings have to be retrofitted so they use less energy.”

(Battery-operated automobiles are already high on Israel’s national agenda, as NJ Gov. Jon Corzine discovered on his trade mission to Tel Aviv and Haifa last week. See separate story.)

“For the Jewish community, this issue should be a very high priority,” said Pamela Frank, an AJC member who directs sales, marketing, and public relations at the Sun Farm Network, a firm specializing in solar energy.

Frank will assist Gall in lobbying Jewish organizations for their support of state environmental issues.

“I have been very interested for years in bringing together a very broad coalition of folks in this state to get us to sustainable energy in New Jersey. With gas at $4 a gallon, people are focused on these things and we’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to focus leadership on where we need to go,” she added.

Frank was among some 500 “stakeholders” invited by the association to deliberate on the state’s Energy Master Plan. The plan’s stated goal is to reduce projected energy use by 20 percent by 2020 and meet 20 percent of the state’s electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020. The EMP is holding public hearings this month.

As she presses fellow Jewish organizations for their strong support, Gall noted that “people in New Jersey have got to buy into this. We are going to be asking them to make changes in their lifestyles and to seriously think how important this is going to be. We have got to think this way.”

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Test-driving the future

AS NJ GOV. Jon Corzine neared the end of his five-day mission to Haifa and Tel Aviv last week, he got behind the wheel of a fully battery-powered Nissan-Renault sedan in the parking lot of his Tel Aviv hotel.

The car is being marketed in Israel and Denmark by an Israel firm called Better Place Project.

The first 50 models will be on Israeli roads this year, and CEO Shai Agassi expects they will be mass-produced by 2011.

His plan calls for a network of battery-recharging areas. The cars will run on lithium-iron batteries, provided by Better Place, that should last for about 124 miles before needing to be recharged. Customers will pay according to a system similar to that used for the air time on their cellular phones.

After taking his test drive, the governor described the experience as “pretty amazing.”

But he told reporters that winning support of the electric car in America is “going to take sheer will.”

Allyson Gall, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s Metro New Jersey Area, however, is more optimistic.

“I really believe New Jersey would be a great place to test this,” she said.

“AJC is going to nudge people on this and get people to be thinking about it. This would be ‘like wow!’ It would get us off oil. It would reduce greenhouse gases. It would be fabulous.”

In addition to his test drive, the governor spent part of his five days in Israel meeting with experts and officials of environmental and high-tech industries — including visits to the MAMTAM High Tech Center, the Weizmann Institute of Science, a water desalinization plant, and Ben-Gurion Airport, where he reviewed a briefing on state-of-the-art security systems.

“Our most important purpose is to try and create economic connections between New Jersey and the Israeli business community, particularly in biotech and clean tech,” said the governor in Tel Aviv. “I do believe there is an enormous opportunity. Israel is focused on biotech and alternative energy and efficiency and conservation measures that are very applicable to New Jersey. That’s where we’ve got a great opportunity.”

— Robert Wiener

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