Gov. Phil Murphy's final energy master plan maintains the state's commitments to cutting fossil fuel sources and focusing on renewables. (Hal Brown for New Jersey Monitor)
By Nikita Biryukov
Reprinted with permission
New Jersey Monitor
Gov. Phil Murphy’s vision for New Jersey energy policy remained mostly unchanged in a new version of the state’s energy master plan released Monday.
Though the new plan places less emphasis on wind energy than the 2019 master plan it succeeds, the document unveiled Monday continues to urge New Jersey to build renewable generation and slowly phase out fossil plants to meet energy and emissions goals over the coming decades.
“This report is the culmination of our no-regrets strategy to tackling the challenges of energy affordability, supply and demand, and climate change,” Murphy said in a statement. “I am proud of all that we’ve been able to achieve to make our energy sector cleaner and more efficient over the past eight years. This report’s recommendations will help guide energy policy to new heights in the future.”
Murphy, a Democrat, leaves office on Jan. 20 after two terms as governor, and another Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, is set to succeed him.
The state’s energy master plan is a policy document whose drafting is mandated by law, though it has no force of law on its own. Its recommendations and framework do not bind lawmakers, but legislators have previously advanced bills to enshrine parts of the 2019 plan in law.
The new plan maintains Murphy’s goal of having New Jersey generate 100% of its electricity from renewable or low-emitting sources by 2035.
That includes a planned phase-out of natural gas plants, which accounted for about 48% of the state’s energy generation in 2023. Mirroring some past proposals, the energy master plan calls for the state to bar the creation of new gas plants and allow existing ones to shut down rather than be renewed.
The plan allows natural gas plants using renewable biofuels under some scenarios, and some gas plants would persist through at least 2050.
Republican lawmakers — and even some Democrats — have criticized the administration for shuttering some of the state’s existing fossil fuel plants without replacements on hand. They said natural gas should be a part of New Jersey’s energy mix.
The plan’s call for renewables differs somewhat from the one issued in 2019. Mainly, the more recent plan places less emphasis on wind generation.
Murphy made wind a key pillar of his energy policy, but the projects not killed by economic headwinds are stalled following a federal permitting and leasing freeze instituted by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Eric Miller, executive director of the state’s climate action and green economy office, said the administration wanted to be sure the new master plan “was responding to the world as it is, not as we want it to be.”
The plan urges New Jersey to continue advocacy before PJM Interconnection, which operates the grid that serves New Jersey and 12 other states. Democrats have said delays in PJM’s interconnection queue are to blame for recent electricity price increases.
Those increases are tied to surging demand spurred by artificial intelligence data centers’ mammoth energy needs following decades of largely level electricity demand.
The plan says New Jersey could help offset those increases by raising income limits on certain utility assistance programs, raising caps on some existing programs’ awards, and potentially tying electricity prices to the time of day.
The plan says New Jersey could continue to weigh the benefits of levying additional fixed charges based on ratepayers’ income, but stops short of proposing that the state do so.
It also maintains dramatic goals for building electrification. Each of the plan’s scenarios would require full electric heating by 2050 in the residential and commercial sectors, though the plan would allow at least some amount of gas heating.
Likewise, it maintains ambitious goals on vehicle electrification. Under each scenario, New Jersey would maintain an existing policy that seeks to phase out the sale of new gas-burning light-duty cars by 2035.
“We are doing everything within our control to expand state programs. We work closely with the utilities so we can expand their programs so that we can continue to expand our EV incentives, expand EV adoption, and most importantly, enhance a lot of the EV infrastructure development that we’ve already started on,” said Preethy Thangaraj, the climate action office’s deputy director.
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in New Jersey, accounting for 35% of state emissions in 2021, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. That level at least doubled emissions from other sources apart from electricity generation, which accounted for 18% of 2021’s emissions.
