This wind turbine at the Jersey Atlantic Wind Farm at the Atlantic City Utilities Authority could help hit the goal of 20 percent of energy production in the state coming from renewable sources by 2020.

New Jersey has set itself an ambitious goal for converting to renewable energy.

By the year 2020, Gov. Jon S. Corzine declared last year, the state should be getting 20 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

"It's a very aggressive target," said Neil Brown, a spokesman for Public Service Electric & Gas, the state's largest utility and one of the companies that will be expected to play a big role in meeting the target.

Ralph Izzo, the president of Public Service Enterprise Group, PSE&G's parent company, put the goal in dramatic terms at a public hearing at the state's Board of Public Utilities last fall.

The 20 percent renewable goal, Izzo pointed out to the board, represents an amount of energy equal to all of the electricity consumed by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 2004.

At present, less than 2.5 percent of the state's electricity comes from renewable resources.

The BPU's Office of Clean Energy plans to address the target by steadily ratcheting up the percentage of electricity that providers such as PSE&G deliver from renewable resources.

The state is providing financial support to subsidize construction of renewable energy facilities, from large commercial units to small residential ones.

And the BPU is encouraging consumers to make a contribution of their own by signing up for clean energy from their local utility, agreeing to pay more to enable the utility to provide more energy from renewable sources.

The financial support available -- it has been in the range of $200 million per year in recent years -- is derived from a tax or surcharge on all electric and gas bills.

It is called the "societal benefits charge" and amounts to about $20 per year on a typical home.

The amount of support available, through grants and rebates, does not generally cover the expense of installing a wind or solar unit.

But it can defray it enough -- typically about 50 percent -- to enable the individuals or businesses to recover their capital costs through lower operating costs over a more reasonable time.

One company that took the plunge into renewable energy is Aluminum Shapes, a Pennsauken manufacturer that partnered with the state, the Pennsauken landfill and a private energy firm to create what it dubbed the Pennsauken Renewable Energy Park.

The Park will generate electricity from methane gas extracted from the Pennsauken landfill as well as from two solar voltaic cells.

Roughly half of the $12 million cost of the park is coming from the state.

It is capable of generating up to 3.8 megawatts of electricity per hour.

By way of comparison, the nuclear generators in Salem County are capable of generating about 3,500 megawatts per hour.

In addition to wind and solar, other categories of renewable energy include water, one of the oldest, and sustainable biomass, basically waste to energy.

Dena Mottola, the executive director of Environment New Jersey, a nonprofit advocacy organization, applauds New Jersey for "setting one of the best clean energy standards in the country" and believes the state can meet its goals.

She points to what she calls the state's leadership in the field of solar energy as an example of what's possible.

From six solar installations in 2001, she notes, the state has moved to 1,800 solar installations today.

And while she does not envision the state's major utilities building new power plants, renewable or otherwise, she believes they will make major contributions to the 20 percent goal because they have to.

"Its unlikely they're going to build anything," Mottola said, "but they will be buying electricity generated by renewable energy from other states."

"Part of the solution will be to make purchases from elsewhere," PSE&G's Brown said, adding that "it's going to require a strong effort from everyone, from state government to the consumer," to meet the target.

As part of the 20 percent goal, the state established a separate 2 percent set aside for solar power within the overall goal.

"I think we'll exceed that goal," Mottola predicted. "We've got a lot of rooftops. And 100 solar days a year."

"There's also a lot more wind -- off-shore as well as on-shore" and technology is being developed in New Jersey to capture the wind off rooftops.