New Jersey Promotes Solar To Lower Utility Bills

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Utility bills for New Jersey residents have risen nearly a third in the past two years. Newly elected Governor Mikie Sherrill has a plan to address the rising cost of electricity and it includes more community and residential solar, among other things.

The process began under former governor Phil Murphy, who proposed changes to the permitting process for residential solar. Industry experts say the paperwork need to get approval to install solar systems and get them connected to the local utility grid can add $3,000 to $5,000 to the cost of a system.

The process is so arduous, many people who want solar simply give up before they get started. For others, those extra costs are enough to skew the numbers so that it takes years longer to reach the break-even point on a new solar installation or the monthly carrying cost is simply too great to make the system affordable.

Smart Solar Permitting

According to Solar Power World, hundreds of US cities are now using smart solar permitting to fast track solar and battery applications. Smart permitting is made possible by state law in California, Maryland, Texas, and Florida. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory — what’s left of it — estimated in 2024 that in the communities where the SolarApp+ is used, it saved 15,400 hours of local government staff time in 2023 and sped up the permitting process by an average of 14.5 days.

The Regional Plan Association said in a recent report that New Jersey has the third slowest permitting timelines for residential solar projects in the country. Families that want to “go solar” typically have to navigate a confusing network of local government hurdles, including multi-departmental reviews, inconsistent or outdated requirements, and antiquated sign-off procedures. The process is so difficult in some municipalities that many installers avoid them, leaving consumers in those towns with limited options to choose from if they want to go solar.

Smart solar permitting could unlock tremendous benefits for New Jersey residents and the local electric grid. Brown University Climate Solutions Lab estimates that adopting smart permitting statewide could result in an additional 200,000 residential solar systems installed by 2040.

The High Cost Of Electricity

During her campaign for governor, Sherrill emphasized that her administration would make the high cost of electricity one of its primary missions. During her inauguration speech in January, she paused twice to sign two executive orders that declared a state of emergency in New Jersey and calling for speeding up new solar and energy storage systems as well as modernizing methane-fired generating stations.

According to Inside Climate News, Sherrill’s first executive order directed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to “pursue a pause, abeyance, or modification” of scheduled or ongoing rate increases. It directed the BPU to create bill credits to subtract from people’s energy bills and explore other forms of “relief” by no later than July of this year. BPU is in the process of formulating plans to comply with that order.

The state has two sources of funds to pay for those credits. One is the Societal Benefits Charge, an assessment added to utility bills that is intended to fund “public purpose” programs like clean energy. The other involves the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — a multi-state cap and trade program whose proceeds fund climate programs.

Currently, New Jersey’s Clean Energy Fund, which is financed by the Social Benefits Charge, had about $590 million available as of June, 2024. The Global Warming Solutions Fund, which receives proceeds from the RGGI, had a balance of roughly $535 million as of June, 2025.

Policy Pluses & Minuses

Allison McLeod, the interim executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, told ICN her organization supports bill relief, but also called on the state not to abandon investments in clean energy.

Brian Lipman, the director of the state’s office of utility rate counsel, says he is concerned that a pause in approving new rate hikes would be a “credit card” solution. Although rate payers may not pay increases immediately, once a pause ends, the utilities will charge them for all the delayed increases.

“As much as it pains me to say it, we do have to take care of the economic health of our utilities,” he said, recommending that the pause not drag on beyond a year. He described the credits on electric bills as a form of triage, not a cure.

Alex Ambrose, an analyst with the nonpartisan think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective, offered what happened with NJ Transit as an example of what happens when rate increases are delayed. Under governor Murphy, fares remained flat for almost a decade. Then in 2024, NJ Transit approved a 15% increase. “So it’s clear that simply doing a pause on its own does not solve the problem. You need to make sure that we’re not sacrificing long term affordability for those short term wins that can feel good,” Ambrose said.

Burning More Methane

The second executive order calls from modernizing the methane-fired generating stations that currently supply almost half of all the electricity in New Jersey. The rest comes from nuclear power and renewables. Modernizing gas plants would mean making them more efficient to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

That is a tough challenge at a time when the federal government is decreeing that coal plants be kept online longer than scheduled to satisfy some infantile concept of the so-called president, who thinks the way to make coal clean is to wash it. Yes, he really is that stupid.

In fact, everything on Sherrill’s clean energy agenda is made more difficult by federal policies that have abruptly ended tax credits that were in place for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations. But the federal government is now a full time shill for fossil fuels — talk about your level playing field!

Dealing With PJM

One of the issues that besets New Jersey is the enormous increase in the demand for electricity created by data centers. It is one of the states served by PJM, the regional grid operator. PJM predicts the data center boom will contribute to raising peak demand for electricity by 20% by 2030.

The price to secure power capacity in PJM has exploded in recent years, with $23 billion attributable to data centers, according to watchdog Monitoring Analytics. Those costs are passed down to consumers. This amounts to a “massive wealth transfer,” it told PJM in a November letter.

Ireland has put new policies in place that require data centers to arrange for their own supply of electricity, with 80% coming from renewable sources. Ohio has recently done something similar, and 8 states have joined a coalition urging big tech companies to pay their fair share. Governor Sherrill could build on all those initiatives.

New Jersey continues to expand its community solar and residential solar programs. According to state data, the Garden State saw an increase of about 307 megawatts of capacity from solar installations in 2025, more than half of the increase coming from residential solar.

In Sherrill’s second EO, she ordered the BPU to open registration of 3,000 MW for community solar projects, which could lead to rebates that appear on their bills. Community solar is another idea that is anathema to the US government. Who do these people think they are, generating their own electricity and depriving fossil fuel companies of their God-given right to profits? What sort of petrostate would we be if we encouraged such dangerous behavior?

Governor Sherrill is off to a good start in her ambition to lower utility bills for New Jersey rate payers, but there is a lot of hard work to be done yet. Much of that work relies on factors outside her control, such as PJM policies and federal subsidies for fossil fuels. But working in concert with neighboring states, she should be able to bend the arc of energy in New Jersey toward cleaner, lower cost alternatives.