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Governor Unveils Suite of Executive Actions to Address Electricity Prices
Excerpts from Press Release:
“Governor Phil Murphy announced an affordability effort to manage anticipated utility price increases ahead of a rate hike set to take effect on June 1, 2025.
“New Jersey ratepayers are preparing for an unprecedented increase in utility costs,” said Governor Murphy. “While the utilities are not responsible for the rate increases, they have a responsibility to protect ratepayers. It’s clear that New Jersey’s four hometown electric utilities need to deliver more reasonable options. We ask that utilities share the load and commit to being part of the solution to the PJM cost crisis. These utilities have reaped billions in profits over the last ten years. My Administration will continue to identify and put all options on the table to mitigate rate increases.”
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) President Christine Guhl-Sadovy advised Governor Murphy on details of the cost-mitigation filings that were received by the May 7, 2025 deadline by New Jersey’s four investor-owned electric utilities: Public Service Electric and Gas, Jersey Central Power and Light (JCP&L), Atlantic City Electric, and Rockland Electric Company.
To manage the rate hikes that ratepayers are going to experience beginning June 1, 2025, the BPU required the four investor-owned electric utilities to file petitions providing proposals to mitigate overall bill impacts to residential customers during high usage summer months. The customer cost mitigation plans were required to include rate deferment to lower usage months and other opportunities to provide rate stabilization and savings where possible.
As part of the effort to manage rate hikes in the short and long term, Governor Murphy is calling for a series of actions building on weeks of efforts led by the Administration, including:
- Urging New Jersey’s electric utilities to:
- Voluntarily expand the Winter Termination Program, which prevents service disconnections in the winter months, to July-September, which JCP&L included in their filing, and;
- Suspend reconnection fees to a certain date past the summer peak usage months.
- Directing the NJBPU to evaluate all available funding and programming to stabilize utility bills,
- Directing the NJBPU to expedite opening another Competitive Solar Incentive Program Solicitation and Community Solar Energy Program Capacity Block by the end of 2025.
- Directing the NJBPU to open a new proceeding on resource adequacy. Within this proceeding, BPU will:
- Evaluate proposals to swiftly bring more generation online.
- Continue to determine how New Jersey can best achieve its reliability, equity, and clean energy objectives while keeping costs to consumers as low as possible, and whether New Jersey is best served the regional capacity market administered by PJM Interconnection.
- Identify policy opportunities to mitigate increased ratepayers costs due to demand growth driven by data center proliferation in the PJM-region.
Capacity market prices make their way to customers’ bills in part through the State’s annual Basic Generation Service (BGS) auctions. The Board’s authority over the auctions is limited and does not extend to influence pricing. As a result of the 2024 PJM Base Residual Auction and the 2025 BGS auctions, the projected average monthly customer bill increases, beginning June 1, 2025, range from 17.23% to 20.20%, depending on the electric utility service territory where the customer resides.
Press Release (05/14/2025)
See also: EX25040210
(In The Matter Of The New Jersey Board Of Public Utilities’ Consideration Of Electric Rate Impacts Beginning June 1, 2025)
