TRENTON, NJ—The Christie administration haslaid the groundwork for what is believed to be the firststate-level fund intended to bankroll projects to makeenergy infrastructure more resilient inextreme weather. Known as the New Jersey EnergyResilience Bank, the fund uses $200 million through New Jersey'ssecond Community Development Block Grant-DisasterRecovery allocation.

First proposed this past February, the initiative comes afterSuperstorm Sandy left an estimated five millionNew Jersey residents without power in the fall of 2012. Distributedenergy resources, including combined heat and power, fuel cells andoff-grid solar inverters with battery storage, allowed somecritical facilities, such as hospitals, wastewater treatment plantsand universities, to remain operational while the electric grid wasdown. ERB is intended to enable many more such facilities to remainoperational during future outages.

“Distributed energy resources proved extremely resilientfollowing Sandy; unfortunately, due to high initial costs, manycritical facilities do not have these energy resilience solutionsin place,” says Michele Brown, CEO of theNew Jersey Economic Development Authority. “TheERB will help address this unmet need by providing technical andfinancial support to critical facilities across New Jersey toensure they have a path for building energy resilience.”