charts, curves and living with risk By: dan kennedy, director of environmental & utility operations
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he last “Pipeline” I penned focused on the important role infrastructure plays in minimizing public health and safety risks. Writing with the coronavirus pandemic as the backdrop, which persists today, I had the hope that by the time of this edition’s release, the construction industry would still be at work. Thankfully, that is largely where we find ourselves today. We at UTCA recognize the core reason for this condition: the hard work and adaptations from your companies, our labor partners, project owners, and their consultants. As an industry, you have rolled with the punches. It has been a struggle at every level, and UTCA has been with you thought it all. CEO Bob Briant, Jr and staff have been laser-focused on helping you stay at work. I, for one, stand humbled as a witness to the collective effort you have made to keep projects moving and your people employed in a safe work environment.
As the economic realities of this shutdown became front and center, citizens and business owners have pushed government
Energy Master Plan – Words Matter We’ve gotten used to seeing the daily charting of infection cases on the news, but there is another chart that may pose longer-term risk to our state: climate change. Sea level rise, storm intensity and frequency, and other factors play into the design and durability of our infrastructure. Climate change is a variable that must be addressed, and the infrastructure construction industry should have a seat at the table where state policies are crafted. It was climate change, not epidemiology, that was on the top of the priority policy list for candidate Phil Murphy. Governor Phil Murphy has made climate change a top priority and progress on that front only recently stalled due to this pandemic. We have every expectation that it will be a theme of his administration that is not forgotten when things settle back into some sense of normal. Given that priority and positioning, UTCA must be poised and ready to engage on this issue proactively to ensure that ensuing policies are both rational and achievable. Climate scientists have told the world that we must limit emissions to stave off the worst effects of climate change. They recommend a global carbon budget with reductions coming from high emission sectors such as transportation. They say that the world has gone past the period where we can reduce our emissions casually. We are told that we need an annual reduction in emissions closer to seven or eight percent worldwide with a disproportionate share of this reduction coming from developed countries such as the United States. For context, this is on par with the emission reduction we are with seeing with the coronavirus lockdown, which has only been possible because of the closure of large swathes of the economy – something certainly not replicable and that we hope never to see again.
The Pipeline
As a society, we have largely embraced the governmental directives to change our work and everyday lives. We were told that these steps were necessary to slow the impact of this terrible virus. We did this to keep our regional healthcare system from being overwhelmed and to ensure that our communities had the capacity to meet various challenges. That was the goal, to “flatten the curve,” and so far, we have met this challenge. We remain vigilant as non-essential aspects of society slowly reopen because we know that we must reopen and get back to some version of normal before the virus is eliminated or we somehow become better protected from the virus
leaders to reopen. This push and pull we have been experiencing is instructive. One can draw on these lessons to inform our approach to other non-pandemic policies of a global scale that will be back to the forefront of statewide policy discussions before we know it. More specially, climate change.
The Governor has finalized a new Energy Master Plan (EMP) that thankfully accepts a “flatten the curve” mentality. The EMP goals, if met, translate to a lower, earlier emissions peak which will lower the impact on global temperature. How much of a dif-
Utility & Transportation Contractor | june| 2020 51
