Shortly after New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill was sworn into office Tuesday, she signed two executive orders declaring a state of emergency to “freeze” utility costs and rapidly ramp up power generation.
The goal is to combat soaring electricity prices in the Garden State, which spiked as much as 20% for some residents over the summer, and quickly emerged as a potent issue in the 2025 campaign.
The Democrat’s first executive order authorizes the state Board of Public Utilities to take actions to stop increases, largely by tapping into state funds to give New Jerseyans credits for electricity increases. Former Gov. Phil Murphy, another Democrat, took similar action last year.
The other component of that order is calling on the BPU to pause or modify proceedings when utility companies pursue price increases.
“It’s probably the most disastrous energy policy I’ve seen a politician suggest in my lifetime,” Alex Stevens, manager of Policy and Communications Institute for Energy Research, a right-leaning group initially backed by billionaire Charles Koch, told The Post.
“Prices are the sharpest signal that markets send, and it’s really the only way that so many people engaging in an economy can coordinate supply and demand,” he continued. “If you impose price controls or ceilings, you basically blind everybody from the information about where supply needs to increase.”
Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at Energy Innovation, differs with Stevens on the potential repercussions of the freeze on utility costs and contends that the notion that it will lead to shortages of electricity is “sort of a misunderstanding.”
“Electricity doesn’t function the way in a lot of other markets function because the prices are determined through a regulatory apparatus; they’re determined through these complex market mechanisms like those that the PJM market operates,” he told The Post.
The second executive order declares a state of emergency, orders state agencies to make reforms to streamline approvals of new energy products, sets up a “Nuclear Power Task Force” to explore those options, and accelerates solar and battery storage generation projects.
Sherrill is aiming to roll back red tape, expedite the permitting process and combat any collusion between energy firms.
Stevens acknowledged the potential benefits of Sherrill’s push to quickly expand electric generation in the Garden State, though he disagrees with her focus on clean energy.
The newly sworn-in governor has declared that she is willing to fight her own party if necessary to bring down electricity prices for New Jerseyans by ramping up power generation.
“There’s households that are really under affordability pressure right now across a number of different fronts,” Pierpont. “One of the places where state policy can control things is in regulated electricity and natural gas rates.”
One of his gripes is with PJM, the power grid operator that services New Jersey and 12 other states.
Alex Ambrose, a policy analyst at the New Jersey Policy Perspective think tank, argues the problem is the backlog PJM has with its interconnection queue, which has hampered new green energy projects. In July, for instance, PJM claimed to have 63,000 MW of projects in its transition queue.
“The lack of supply is because PJM is really delaying the building of new energy sources,” she argued.
“Their interconnection queue, which is the line that developers wait in to build energy, has projects that have been waiting for five years just to get approved, even before they start building and get to plug into the grid. And uncertainty is a project-killer.”
Data suggest that old power plants on the PJM grid system that covers New Jersey are being retired at a similar rate as new plants coming online. New Jersey shut down its last coal plant in 2022.
While residential electricity costs in New Jersey shot up over 33% between June 2023 and June 2025, PJM’s capacity prices rocketed over 800% in 2024, Sherrill’s executive order noted.
New Jersey isn’t alone in this phenomenon. Electricity prices have been on the rise nationwide, soaring by roughly 5.5% last year, which outpaced the rate of inflation, thanks in part to the boom of artificial intelligence.
But experts believe the issue is particularly acute in NJ because in-state power consumption lags behind creation, leaving the Garden State at the mercy of its neighbors.
New Jersey has the 12th-highest residential electricity costs in the country, according to the latest available statistics.
“They don’t have enough generation in the state of New Jersey to meet their existing needs, so they’re having to import it from Pennsylvania and from other states that are producing more than they need,” explained Jason Isaac, founder of the American Energy Institute, which represents clients in the fossil fuel industry.
“That drives up the cost.”
New Jersey got close to a fifth of its electricity from out of state in 2023, the most recent year from which data are available, per the US Energy Information Administration.
