Governor’s race 2025 on the issues: Climate and energy

This story was reported and written by New Jersey State House News Service intern reporters Victoria Gladstone, Paige Britt, Emma Ferschweiler, Madison Miller and Abby Thomas.

New Jersey’s climate and energy policies are gaining close scrutiny in the gubernatorial primary as President Donald Trump’s administration has disrupted the state’s path to 100% clean power by 2035.

Offshore wind, solar energy and the grid’s strain from artificial intelligence data centers have all been a focus of Republican and Democratic candidates. Murphy’s fellow Democrats say alternative energy fits with the state’s green goals, while some Republicans want to stick with fossil fuels. 

Democrats

U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill says solar power is key to lower costs. 

“I have a plan on community solar and investments there, as well as utility-grade solar and how we can put those on state-owned land, on remediated landfills, parking lots, the top of big-box stores across the state, so we can really drive down utility costs and create cleaner energy,” Sherrill said.

Steve Sweeney, the former state Senate president, says reusable natural gas, involving methane derived from organic waste, shows promise as environmentally friendly and efficient.

“The quickest and the most affordable energy that we can bring in here right now is reusable gas, and we need to do that now,” Sweeney said. “We need pipelines. We need to build power plants.” 

Sweeney said he supports Atlantic Coast offshore wind, which was central to Governor Phil Murphy’s clean-power initiative. Trump’s environmental regulators, though, have blocked wind permits. Sweeney said New Jersey’s goal should be to operate without PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator that sells electricity to local utilities. As a result of higher auction rates for that supply, New Jersey utility bills are set to rise by as much as 20% on June 1. “We need to be independent, really, from the PJM grid,” Sweeney said. 

New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller says green energy technology, which enables solar, wind and other renewable power delivery, would help lower bills. “I will be investing in our green technology because that is the future, because it’s also good for the environment, but also because diversification will keep our energy bills down and certainly also provide for our rising energy needs,” Spiller said.

Steven Fulop, the Jersey City mayor, wants a makeover of the state Board of Public Utilities, which regulates energy policy, to increase its accountability with more scientists and energy experts. “The BPU has become a political dumping ground for former politicians, not energy experts,” Fulop said. “A lot of the issues that we have right now are byproducts of not having the best and brightest.”

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka wants to increase solar energy, particularly as the tremendous energy needs of AI data centers are driving costs and straining supply. “We need to force them to find alternative energy sources or supplemental energy sources like solar and batteries to power these AI centers, so it won’t drive the prices up or put the extra strain on the electric grid here in the state of New Jersey,” Baraka said. 

U.S. Representative Josh Gottheimer didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Republicans

Republican candidates have a different approach to environmental efforts. Some say they favor relying on traditional ways of lowering the carbon footprint rather than trying new methods that may fail. 

Former radio personality Bill Spadea says taxpayer money is being spent frivolously while the state falls down on energy policy. He would fire the Board of Public Utilities, whom in a Facebook broadcast he called “a bunch of backroom lobbyists and lawyers and insiders,” and replace them with citizen ratepayers. He also wants to build small nuclear reactors for residential and commercial needs and cogeneration steam plants that can power government buildings, hospitals and schools. 

“We have had enough with wind energy,” Spadea said. “It’s inefficient, it’s expensive and it destroys our coastline.”

Mario Krajac, a former Englewood Cliffs mayor, says environmental protection makes sense only if it’s cost-efficient. He favors what he calls “proven alternatives” like nuclear energy, plus the standby fossil fuels, to supply the most energy at the highest efficiency. 

“We do need to provide for actual working alternatives, not offshore wind and solar,” Kranjac said. “Those sound nice, but they don’t work, not to the point where we need them to work, and the only things that are proven are nuclear and fossil fuels.” 

State Senator Jon Bramnick wants to rework Murphy’s Clean Energy Act, minus offshore wind. He criticized a $1 billion tax incentive that the Murphy administration offered to Orsted, a Danish energy company. Orsted in 2023 pulled out of building two wind farm projects in New Jersey, citing rising inflation and interest rates and supply-chain issues. 

“They still couldn’t do it” with the tax break, Bramnick said. He said he would incorporate “all sorts of energy sources” to decrease New Jersey’s reliance on out-of-state energy. “If we do that, that’s going to bring down the cost of energy, too, but that’s not going to happen immediately,” Bramnick said.

New Jersey State House News Service didn’t get responses from Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman who lost the governor’s race in 2021, and Justin Barbera, a contractor.