Josh Shapiro’s Destructive Energy Policies Spill Across the Border

T he New Jersey gubernatorial race has been electric — really. Soaring electricity costs have become the focal point of the race between the two leading candidates: Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli.

But what Jersey voters don’t realize is that a dark horse candidate is driving up electricity costs. This individual isn’t on the ballot — he’s not even in New Jersey. In fact, he’s in a neighboring state. The candidate? Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

As Politico recently reported, Shapiro has played an outsized role in the New Jersey election. He even intends to campaign in New Jersey while Pennsylvania endures hardships from a monthslong impasse over the state’s unfinished budget.

But to understand Shapiro’s effect on energy costs, let’s first examine Pennsylvania’s and New Jersey’s respective energy markets.

New Jersey cannot produce enough electricity to meet its own needs. The state imports about a quarter of its electricity. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania — with its abundance of natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy — is the nation’s leading exporter of electricity.

Both states share the same regional transmission organization (RTO): PJM Interconnection. In fact, both represent two-thirds of PJM’s founding members. (Guess what the first two letters of the abbreviation stand for.) When it comes to energy, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are inextricably linked.

Shapiro wants people to think that PJM is to blame for rising prices. During a recent summit, he threatened to leave PJM and “go it alone.”

But PJM is just a convenient bogeyman. In reality, Shapiro’s energy policies are to blame. Pennsylvanians and New Jerseyites alike can anticipate higher prices if the governor continues virtue signaling to climate alarmists with his agenda.

One of his first nods to his progressive base involves an entity with which Jersey residents are all too familiar: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). This multistate compact levies a carbon tax on energy producers. In 2005, New Jersey was a founding member of the compact. Declaring RGGI “a failure,” former Governor Chris Christie removed New Jersey from the compact in 2011. However, Governor Phil Murphy rejoined RGGI in 2020.

Pennsylvania’s on-again, off-again membership with RGGI has been equally complicated. In 2019, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf attempted to join RGGI through unilateral executive action. However, the Commonwealth Court rightly ruled that the carbon tax was unconstitutional because only the state legislature has the legal authority to levy taxes.

As a candidate, Shapiro was initially skeptical of RGGI, saying it didn’t constitute “real action.” He was right: RGGI threatened to increase electricity prices by 30 percent, according to an analysis by the Power PA Jobs Alliance.

RGGI also wasn’t necessary to cut emissions. In 2023, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office, a nonpartisan agency providing legislative analysis, found that carbon emissions in Pennsylvania had dropped nearly 11 percent from the previous year — the most significant year-over-year drop in decades.

Regardless, Shapiro decided to appeal the ruling. His appeal has created uncertainty in energy markets as companies await the outcome of this case. The protracted litigation has already cost taxpayers more than $4.2 million in legal fees.

But RGGI was merely political leverage for Shapiro’s own cap-and-trade plan: the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Act (PACER).

If RGGI were a bad movie, PACER would be its even worse sequel. According to an analysis by the Commonwealth Foundation, PACER would add more than $2 billion in statewide electricity costs over the next ten years.

Shapiro also wants to increase Pennsylvania’s reliance on unreliable energy. Pennsylvania’s current energy mandate — the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS) — requires 18 percent of the commonwealth’s electricity to originate from intermittent sources like wind and solar. Complying with AEPS resulted in more than $700 million in additional energy costs in 2024 alone.

Now, Shapiro wants to up the ante with the Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard (PRESS). PRESS is AEPS on steroids. It requires 50 percent of Pennsylvania electricity to originate from “green” sources. If implemented, PRESS would add $155 billion in new energy costs by 2035.

Combined, PACER and PRESS would force Pennsylvanians to pay $146 more per month on their electricity bills. Moreover, if Pennsylvania enacts PACER or RGGI, energy production will likely contract, leading to higher wholesale prices in PJM. Less electricity to export is bad news for export-dependent New Jersey.

New Jersey has been its own worst enemy when it comes to electricity prices. By rejoining RGGI, shuttering reliable power plants, and enacting an aggressive plan to shift to 100 percent “clean” energy by 2035, New Jersey has become one of the least affordable states for electricity.

Yet while New Jersey lawmakers certainly affect energy prices in their own state, Shapiro remains a stealth threat with his hands on the light switch. Jersey’s energy future is bound to the whims of Shapiro’s Green New Deal-style policies, which threaten grid stability and energy affordability not only in Pennsylvania but also in New Jersey.