Gov. Sherrill Tries to Control NJ's Utility Bills

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Coming up later this hour, Queens and Nassau Congressman Tom Swasey, who is declaring himself a Democratic Capitalist, as opposed to Democratic Socialist, in response to the election of Mayor Mamdani and last month's New York Congressional primary results. As we continue to get numerous voices from various points in the Democratic Party on this spectrum, we'll see what he means today by Democratic Capitalist and invite your calls and texts for him. Also today, we're going to have a cardiologist to basically give you advice on how to prevent yourself from dying in the way that Lindsey Graham did. That's coming up and we'll talk about the resurgence of waiting online. You know that in New York, we say online, not in line, right? Waiting online, which is back as a thing in New York City.
There's an article about that in The Cut and we're going to talk to that reporter and take your calls on what you are waiting in line for, online for, that you're willing to spend that time to wait for in person these days.
Why is it coming up in about 15 minutes?
We begin in New Jersey, where Governor Mikie Sherrill has been pushing to bring down some of the highest electric bills in the country. You remember it was her core campaign promise, and she made some fresh news on that last week. In her first six months, Governor Sherrill has signed a flurry of energy laws, and they include this July 7th trio of bills aimed at utilities and data centers paired with one-time bill credits. Just this week, the governor signed a nuclear procurement bill meant to add power supply over the long haul. Yes, the Democratic governor wants to give another look to nuclear power. The through line is affordability, of course, though it's believed the real payoff is mostly years away. That said, in the very near short term, every electric customer will receive a one-time $25 credit on their August bill. Michael Sol Warren covers New Jersey energy and the environment for WNYC and Gothamist, where he's been tracking all of this. Hey, Michael, welcome back to the show.

**Michael Sol Warren** (2:23)
Hey, Brian, thanks for having me.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:25)
So let's tick through those three bills. One of them makes New Jersey utilities join a regional grid organization. What does that mean?

**Michael Sol Warren** (2:33)
Yeah, the regional grid organization, it is the power grid. So in New York, that's the ISO. But in New Jersey, that is PJM, which is a large regional grid, serves about more than a dozen states, including all of New Jersey. So all of the four major electric utilities serving the Garden State are already members of PJM. But up until now, that membership was technically voluntary. This law is going to make it mandatory.
And that has some financial implications, both for customers, but also for the utility companies.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:14)
But if I'm understanding you correctly, it just reinforces a status quo. Whatever benefits being a member of that regional grid confers were already in place?

**Michael Sol Warren** (3:26)
Yes, the main thing that's going to change here under the law is that the incentive that utilities were being paid to be members is going to go away.
Because now it's mandatory, so membership doesn't have to be incentivized. So that what that means for customers is that a fee that had been on their bill that was basically a little cut to the utilities for being members of this regional grid isn't going to be on the bill anymore.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:58)
All right. Next bill, the data center bill. It's one the business community fought. It's probably the one of the three they fought the hardest. Tell me if you think that's right.
What does it actually require of data centers?

**Michael Sol Warren** (4:12)
Yeah, it was definitely a talker, that's for sure.
I think that the utilities might have fought the previous bill we were discussing about the membership incentives just as hard, if not harder. But the data center bill, what it does is it puts data centers in their own class when it comes to defining what rate payers are. So most of us, pretty much all of us are residential customers of our electric company. If you are a business owner, you're commercial. If you are heavy industry, there's a class for you for industrial users. This creates a dedicated class for data centers, and that means that New Jersey electric companies are going to be able to charge them different rates than they would charge the average homeowner. And the goal here by state leaders is to ensure that data centers are going to be charged, what they're calling their fair share.