With skyrocketing electricity rates now front and center for most Garden State voters, New Jersey’s 2025 gubernatorial race is rapidly setting up as the first clear-cut referendum in this country on the true cost and false promises of the clean energy revolution.
New Jersey, like many other Democrat-run states, is now dealing with the consequences of years of bad energy policy driven by artificial emissions constraints and unattainable net-zero goals. Over the past decade, the state has replaced reliable coal and natural gas generation with intermittent solar and wind power and moved from electricity self-sufficiency to import dependency. Since 2015, average residential power prices in New Jersey have increased by 64% despite anemic load growth up until the recent AI-related demand boom.
New Jersey’s participation in blue-state climate affinity groups such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) transmission organization has only compounded the state’s electricity price woes. RGGI membership requires individual power plants to purchase carbon dioxide allowances to operate, which raises the cost of electricity production for in-state fossil fuel generators.
Increasing reliance on PJM for the state’s excess power needs means that New Jersey is also importing electricity price inflation, given that this regional grid operator is similarly plagued by anti-fossil fuel bias and capacity mismanagement, leading to increased auction market volatility. The pass-through of sharply higher PJM wholesale prices caused New Jersey utility bills to jump by an average of 17-20% in June of this year, with another increase looming in 2026.
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