Jan 13, 2026 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
The New Jersey Senate has advanced a bill that would create new tariff classes for “large load” data centers in an effort to protect ratepayers in the state from cost increases.
The bill, cosponsored by ten Democrat lawmakers, would require public electrical utilities in the state to submit proposed tariffs to the state Board of Public Utilities and incentivize data centers to increase energy efficiency through the adoption of technologies that capture and reuse heat they generate.
“It’s become very clear to us, because we’ve done hearings on the PJM grid - and how their auction process has gotten skewed by these data centers, whether they're coming or just proposed - [that they are] then reserving power for [data centers],” said state Senator John Burzichelli, a Gloucester County Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors.
“This is really just a transfer of cost. These operators and data centers, their percentage of profit — if they want to make it, they’re going to make it. If we charge them more to take electricity costs and dump it on them, they’re just going to charge it back to keep their profit,” O’Scanlon said. “It’s going to come right back to the end users to be paid through our phones, our data plans, etcetera.”
