Data Centers and New Jersey’s Energy Crisis: Part 2 – Governor Sherrill’s First Two Executive Orders Demonstrate Her Commitment to a Solution
As discussed in the first article of this series, New Jersey’s runaway energy costs were front and center in New Jersey’s 2025 gubernatorial election. And the focus has only grown since the election. It is no small thing that Governor Mikie Sherrill dedicated her first two executive orders to addressing the energy crisis, which she attributes in part to the rise in data centers. Yet within days of signing those executive orders, Nvidia announced it would invest another $2 billion in New Jersey-based CoreWeave to build more data centers.
Can Governor Sherrill not only get New Jersey out of its current energy deficit but also keep apace with data centers’ ever-increasing energy demands?
Sherrill’s two executive orders revive some old strategies and attempt new ones. The two orders are intertwined, but they have distinct goals: Executive Order No. 1 is focused on consumer costs, while Executive Order No. 2 is focused on increasing energy production.
Executive Order No. 1 establishes the narrative for New Jersey’s energy crisis. It notes that “New Jersey homeowners rank fifth-highest in homeowner cost burden” and that “the amount of household income needed for a New Jersey family to live comfortably increased over 12 percent” from 2024 to 2025, which was “the second highest such increase in the nation.” And the order identifies culprits: the surge of energy demand from data centers; the retirement of older power plants; and PJM’s delays in getting new generation sources on the grid.
To assist consumers, Governor Sherrill directs the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (“BPU”) to offset rate increases by issuing residential universal bill credits (“RUBCs”). New Jersey residents are already familiar with RUBCs: in 2025, under the Murphy administration, BPU applied RUBCs to residents’ September and October bills in the form of $50 credits each month.
Governor Sherrill also orders BPU to consider reducing the societal benefits charge that is added to consumers’ energy bills. In 1999 the New Jersey legislature imposed the surcharge to finance the Clean Energy Fund (“CEF”), which was meant to get renewable energy projects off the ground. But the CEF has long been a sore spot for New Jersey residents who have complained about a lack of transparency and accountability in how funds are employed. (Last year alone, Governor Phil Murphy diverted $140 million of CEF money to the New Jersey Transit budget and another $50 million to the general state budget. Governor Chris Christie redirected $1.2 billion from the CEF during his tenure.) Consumers could see this added charge reduced in the coming year.
As promised during her gubernatorial campaign, Governor Sherrill declares a state of emergency in regard to energy in Executive Order No. 2, which is laser focused on creating more energy for New Jersey.
Governor Sherrill orders the BPU to hurry. She orders it to accelerate the development of solar energy generation by initiating a solicitation of new solar facilities within 45 days and requiring BPU to issue project awards within 270 days of the solicitation. She also orders BPU to accelerate the development of battery storage by speeding up the Garden State Energy Storage Program, which the BPU launched in 2025.
To further push clean energy projects to move faster, Governor Sherrill orders every New Jersey executive branch department that is involved in permitting or siting of electricity generation and grid stabilization projects to transmit to the Governor within 45 days a memorandum identifying all rules, regulations and statutes whose compliance could possibly be waived in an effort to expedite energy development. She similarly orders DEP to expedite their permitting process for gas-fired power plant electricity.
Nuclear power in the state has remained stagnant for decades, but Governor Sherrill now seeks to expand it. New Jersey currently has three nuclear power plants—Salem 1 (built in 1977), Salem 2 (1981), and Hope Creek (1986)—and they make up about a third of New Jersey’s energy supply. The oldest of those nuclear plants is licensed to operate for another decade. Executive Order No. 2 establishes a Nuclear Power Task Force that will coordinate with state agencies, the federal government, and other states to develop a plan to create new nuclear generation facilities in the state, which could significantly increase the state’s energy supply.
Another initiative new to the state is the creation of a virtual power plant. Virtual power plants can aggregate energy resources like stored battery power, but they can also aim to get high-energy industrial consumers to reduce their usage when demand is high. Executive Order No. 2 requires that BPU develop a virtual power plant within 180 days. All eyes will be on BPU’s efforts to get data centers to reduce their energy consumption.
Finally, Executive Order No. 2 goes straight to a primary source of energy shortages: it orders BPU to make the four utility providers explain how they are attempting to involve renewable energy projects. Although Governor Sherrill has less authority over the utility providers than she does over her own executive agencies, this could create more pressure for utility providers to add renewable energy sources to the New Jersey grid.
Amidst this backdrop, a new kind of data center is preparing to open in New Jersey. Last week the CEO of DataOne, the company behind a new Vineland data center, hosted a town hall where local residents asked him about the project’s effect on electricity and water usage, as well as the environment. DataOne claims to take an “eco-friendly” approach to data centers by recovering and repurposing heat, using solar power, self generating water through condensation, and retrofitting existing buildings. The Vineland data center is DataOne’s third project. If DataOne is able to keep its energy demands as low as it suggest, data centers like it may reduce the need for increasingly stringent responses from the government.
In using her first two executive orders to address New Jersey’s energy crisis, Governor Sherrill demonstrated that this is a top priority for her administration. Businesses, data centers, utilities, and municipalities should watch closely to see how these orders come to fruition, as their many directives will likely have a significant impact on energy producers and consumers. But these executive orders only add to an existing framework of energy and data center legislation recently signed by former Governor Phil Murphy, as well as a tangle of pending bills on which Governor Sherrill will have to act (or not). Those pending bills and recent legislation will be addressed in the next articles in this series.
The information contained in this article is not legal advice and has not been updated to include changes in the law since this article was originally published.