TRYING TO WIN TRUMP ON WIND — POLITICO’s Ry Rivard: The offshore wind industry is not all doom and gloom ahead of a second Trump administration. While President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized wind power as unsightly and dangerous to wildlife, wind supporters have some Republicans and union members in Trump’s coalition to vouch for the emerging sector. “We are confident in the offshore wind industry’s ability to continue to support thousands of high-paying jobs, bolster local economies and be a significant driver of economic development,” said Jason Ryan, a spokesperson for American Clean Power, which represents clean energy companies, including wind developers. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin , a Republican, has praised a major offshore wind project there as part of an “all-American, all-of-the-above energy plan.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said this week he is looking to continue his unique relationship with Trump and his family, which has helped Murphy and his blue state. While the governor acknowledged in an interview with POLITICO that cooperation on offshore wind would be “trickier” than some other areas, he didn’t suggest the door is closed. New Jersey environmental advocates are hoping Murphy can find a way to persuade Trump that wind energy is a good thing for the nation. “I think it’s probably going to be tough work , require a lot of monitoring, a lot of deftness, a lot of political shrewdness, which I think the governor is well-positioned to work through those kinds of details,” said the head of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, Ed Potosnak. NTSB PROBES NJT TREE CARE — POLITICO’s Ry Rivard: The National Transportation Safety Board is focusing its investigation of a fatal train crash last month on New Jersey Transit’s right-of-way maintenance and inspection practices, and dispatcher reporting procedures, as well as the crashworthiness of the railcar’s design. The NTSB on Thursday released a short report on its preliminary findings that provided some basic details around the Oct. 14 crash that killed a train operator and injured 23 passengers. The mention of the rights-of-way shows the probe will explore NJ Transit practices and inspection procedures. An attorney representing the family of the deceased train operator said immediately after the crash that there have been concerns about tree trimming along the train lines. MURPHY’S TRUMP PLAN — POLITICO’s Ry Rivard: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy forged a unique relationship with Donald Trump that could help the blue state when Trump returns to the White House, especially on infrastructure projects. While the Democratic governor is preparing to clash with Republicans on immigration and women’s rights, Murphy is also looking to work with Trump on issues like Gateway, an area they’ve already worked together before. “If it's contrary to our values, we will fight to the death,” Murphy said in a Wednesday press conference on the election. “If there’s an opportunity for common ground, we will seize that as fast as anybody.” Nobody is calling them besties but Murphy has a relationship with Trump and his family unlike any other blue state leader. Murphy, who has led both the Democratic Governors Association and the nonpartisan National Governors Association, expects talking about his Trump strategy with other Democrats could be a “big chunk of my life over the next couple of months.” Murphy and Trump had dinner at the president’s New Jersey golf club in 2020. At the end of the meal, Trump publicly came out in support of a key part of the Gateway program, the Portal North Bridge, which carries commuters back and forth to New York City. “The president heard my argument and green-lit the project literally that night,” Murphy said, citing a model of interaction he hopes can work next year. Offshore wind, which Trump has repeatedly trashed and Murphy has made a major part of his own clean energy age NJ TRANSIT CUSTOMER SERVICE ADVOCATE — NJ Transit’s new customer advocate said after three weeks on the job he’s still in the assessment phase of his work. Franck Beaumin said he views his job as advocating for minor, medium and major fundamental changes to the rider experience. While he has experience with transit systems abroad that are often considered superior to America’s, he said, “I will tell you the grass is not always green on the other side of the fence.” — Ry Rivard NJ: THINKING AHEAD TO '25 — POLITICO's Daniel Han reports on what the election results may mean for the 2025 gubernatorial race in New Jersey: “The conventional wisdom in New Jersey politics is that the party that wins the presidency is given a disadvantage in the next year’s gubernatorial race.” Gov. Phil Murphy, who has set major clean energy goals, some of which are imperiled by the various ups and downs of the offshore wind market, is term-limited and the first two-term Democrat to win the top job in Trenton since 1977. While some Democratic candidates to succeed him might be friendly to offshore wind — like former Senate President Steve Sweeney, who is a major champion of the industry — it’s not clear anyone would attempt to claim the mantle, as Murphy did, of the nation’s greenest governor. But, there are at least some indications the state is also turning a bit more red: Former President Donald Trump improved his performance in New Jersey. On Tuesday night, with nearly 86 percent of the vote in, Trump got 46 percent of the vote, up from 42 percent in his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden. Moreover, long before a new governor takes office, a White House hostile to offshore wind, as Trump likely would be, would imperil at least two of the state's three approved projects that are nowhere near getting all the federal permits needed to begin construction. NY: SANITATION MEASURE PASSES — POLITICO's Jeff Coltin and Jesse Naranjo: New York City voters delivered a win to Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday, approving four of his five ballot proposals that modestly change the City Charter to empower the executive branch of government, including changes to codify the Department of Sanitation’s ability to clean highways and sidewalks outside of city parks, and make minor changes to the city's 10-year capital planning process. PSEG UNRATTLED BY FERC DATA CENTER DECISION — PSEG, which is hoping to sell energy from its nuclear facilities directly to new data centers, appears unfazed by FERC’s surprise rejection of such a deal by another power company in the region. In an earnings call on Monday , CEO Ralph LaRossa was peppered with questions from financial analysts about what a Friday FERC order meant for the prospects of his company selling power to an artificial intelligence data center in New Jersey. The order — rejecting a deal that would have allowed an Amazon Web Services data center to pull power from a Talen-owned nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania — came as a shock to independent power producers who had largely banked on federal approval to set the stage for similar deals in the future. “We think that was a very narrow decision that was made by FERC, so, very specific to what was submitted by the parties there,” LaRossa said. PSEG was not involved in the Pennsylvania deal, so, LaRossa said, “it has not slowed us down and will not slow us down trying to help the state of New Jersey meet their economic development goals.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is doggedly pursuing a slice of the red-hot AI industry, which depends largely on machine learning experts and enormous amounts of energy. Murphy’s administration thinks it can sell the state. After all, Princeton is home to a Nobel Prize-winning machine learning pioneer. And, PSEG has three nuclear power plants and is looking to sell that clean energy to someone. LaRossa said he wants to get a deal done before Murphy leaves office in early 2026. “We’ve been focused on that timeline since we started these discussions,” he said. Lingering around any deal is Murphy’s clean energy legacy. The governor wants the entire energy system in the state to be cleaned up in the coming decades. Right now, the bulk of the state’s clean energy comes from the nuclear plants. If the energy from those plants is repackaged and sold directly to a new data center because the data center is “behind the meter,” the state could end up with a dirtier energy profile than when Murphy took office, at least on paper. PSEG’s CFO Dan Cregg seemed to tackle some related concerns during the earnings call. “A lot of the discussions related to whether it's behind the meter or in front of the meter doesn't ultimately change the supply-demand needs, right?” he said. — Ry Rivard and Catherine Morehouse DAY LATE, BILLIONS SHORT — POLITICO’s Kelsey Tamborrino and Jessie Blaeser: Democrats’ climate law launched a huge surge of manufacturing initiatives across critical swing states — but only a fraction of those projects are up and running, even as voters rendered a judgment on the party’s policy agenda. Companies say market realities, questions about President Joe Biden’s policies or worries about a second Trump administration have clouded some of the heady expectations raised by the August 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. And many of the private-sector green manufacturing projects that businesses announced since then are arriving more slowly than expected, according to a POLITICO analysis of company announcement data. Two-thirds of the announced investment won’t be completed until next year or later, the analysis found. That timetable means that many voters have yet to feel the full economic benefits that new solar, wind, battery or electric vehicle factories could bring to their communities. It could even allow Donald Trump, who has vowed to rescind Biden’s climate spending, to bask in its accomplishments. “People talk about steel in the ground. They talk about plans. Schenectady is a real deal,” Roger Martella, GE Vernova’s chief sustainability officer, said of the company’s operating wind manufacturing line. “You could go there today and you can see something we're making come off the line today that wasn't happening before.” | 
