The State We're In

Jun 20, 2025

By Alison Mitchell, Executive Director, New Jersey Conservation Foundation

You’ve probably noticed your electric bill going up, and wondered what can be done about it. More clean energy like solar and wind could help lower those bills – and help protect the environment – but it’s stuck in line.

While New Jersey has been making great strides in developing clean energy in-state, our power grid that brings electricity from power plants to your house is a big regional system. It’s like a huge road network for energy, carrying electricity to homes, schools, and stores – everywhere. And with the exception of nuclear power, right now almost all of that energy comes from plants burning fossil fuels like gas and coal. Solar and wind only contributed about 6 percent to our regional grid as of the end of last year.

Dirty energy sources make the climate crisis worse and pollute our air and water. And the cost of electricity from the existing generation plants – primarily based on fossil fuels – is increasing.

Why aren’t clean energy sources coming online more quickly? Imagine if you went to an amusement park, and every ride had a giant line that barely moved because only a few people could go on the ride each time. That’s what’s been happening with all new energy projects for the past few years. In New Jersey, and in many other states, there are hundreds of clean energy projects that – when completed – can plug into the grid and start sending power to people’s homes. But they’re stuck in a long waiting line.

Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM) is the regional entity that operates the electricity system in New Jersey and 12 other states. When a new electric generation project wants to connect to the grid, it has to ask PJM for permission. But PJM has a big problem: their approval system is backlogged and slow. All energy projects are waiting an average of five years just to get a yes or no.

From a clean energy perspective, we are on the cusp of a great transformation. A fundamental shift is coming to our regional grid – as more than 95 percent of new projects waiting to connect are solar, wind, and storage! What would happen to electric rates if PJM took additional steps to speed up the approval process enabling this transition to clean resources to happen more quickly?

According to a new Synapse Energy Economics report released by Evergreen Collaborative, the current process that slowly adds new generation to the grid will increase electric bills almost 60 percent over the next 10 to 15 years. Our electric bills are getting bigger because cleaner, more affordable energy projects that are trying to plug into the system are not being added quickly enough. And while those resources wait to connect, the grid keeps using the old, dirty fossil fuels that are already online.

The Synapse study shows that if clean energy projects in the PJM queue could connect faster, we’d have more electricity from solar and wind – and New Jersey families would save over $400 each year through 2040. Solar and wind cost less to operate since they don’t pay for fuel – the sun and wind are free!

PJM acknowledges that a recent spike in prices is largely due to a shortage of new, reliable energy projects being built and connected to the grid at a time when there is increased demand for electricity to power planned data centers. That is why speeding up the review of renewable energy projects is key to addressing rising electric costs!

As of March 2025, 143 gigawatts worth of projects – including 79 projects in New Jersey – were awaiting approval in PJM’s interconnection queue. Despite initial steps that PJM took in 2022 to reform its approval process, it’s unlikely that projects currently applying to join the grid will come online before 2030. That’s too long to wait for lower costs and fewer emissions when the climate change crisis is already upon us.

Governor Murphy and legislative leaders are pushing PJM to adopt additional reforms to speed up the interconnection process – enabling the regional electric grid to become significantly cleaner and more affordable. If you want to help, call your state Assembly members and your Senator and urge them to keep electricity rates low in New Jersey by speeding up the addition of clean energy into our power grid. Visit https://njleg.state.nj.us/legislative-roster to find your legislators and their contact information.

To learn more about how you can help preserve New Jersey’s natural resources, visit the New Jersey Conservation Foundation at www.njconservation.org or reach out to us at info@njconservation.org.