- In our Spotlight on Business report tonight, tackling New Jersey's electricity crisis.

The State Board of Public Utilities today hosted a technical conference, the first one in five years, with energy experts and consumer advocates coming together to figure out how to alleviate rising costs and bring more energy sources online.

It comes after grid operator PJM's latest capacity auction hit record highs for the second year in a row, putting the strain on rate payers' bills.

Senior Correspondent Joanna Gagas joins us from today's conference.

Hey, Jo, good to see you.

So is there any relief in sight?

- Yeah, Brianna, obviously electricity costs are top of mind for everyone.

After a rate increase of about 20% went into effect in June, and customers actually haven't even started to feel that increase because the state delayed it until October when electricity usage usually goes down.

But there's been no shortage of finger pointing as to the why.

Republicans are blaming Democrats for their energy master plan.

Democrats have blamed PJM, the multi-state grid operator for the region, and PJM has blamed data centers.

But today felt a little bit different.

Industry leaders came together for the first time in five years to talk about the complexity of the energy market and to share ideas for how to ensure reliability while also keeping costs down.

- Because rates have gone up a lot, there's a lot of discussion about this.

And you'll find people with simple answers.

There are not simple answers.

There are a lot of things we have to do from a lot of angles.

- One of the challenges has been to forecast how much electricity we'll need, and it's been complicated by the onset of data centers coming online and bringing a massive demand for energy from the grid.

- There is a pressing need to get capacity online, to do it at a price that is reasonable for rate payers, and it's a big question to figure out how to do that.

- And it raises concerns about reliability, the energy being there when you need it, which the industry hasn't had to worry about for decades.

- It doesn't surprise me that rate payers emphasize costs more than reliability.

I mean, I would, too.

I do, too, right now, because we've enjoyed 99.9% reliability for most of our lives.

I do think, though, if we continue on the track that we're on and reliability starts to suffer, I think people may have different responses to that survey.

And, you know, I just want to, everybody should bear in mind that under the wrong set of circumstances, if we don't have electricity for a sufficient period of time, today, people actually die.

- We haven't reached a point of critical supply in New Jersey, but there have been five demand days already this summer.

Those are days where energy reaches peak demand based on usage.

- Because of the heat that we have seen this year and last year, and, you know, we have continued to see increases in heat going forward, we have needed a lot more electricity capacity than we have, you know, had in previous years.

- And don't forget about those data centers driving much of that demand.

- There's a supply crunch.

So we have, we're kind of seeing this condition where the demand and the supply are starting to cross or getting very close to it.

And so I think data centers could potentially be part of the solution through load flexibility, whether it be through an established PJM product demand response, which is essentially an agreement to curtail load for a certain number of hours a year, or through alternative solutions that we could talk about with our stakeholders.

- But beyond ensuring reliability, state leaders like Board of Public Utilities President Christine Gould Sadovi are looking into the process for how market rates are set, arguing that clean energy sources need to be brought online faster.

- The state is committed to our clean energy goals, and we want to make sure that we're meeting our new capacity with clean resources, like solar and storage, and how we can best work with PJM to ensure that their market rules are not artificially changing the dynamics of resource adequacy, because that is what we have seen in the past, is we want to make sure that the rules in the market are reflecting real supply and demand, and that we are coming up with solutions to bring more capacity online as quickly as possible.

- Now, getting energy online has been another hot button issue.

I spoke to some environmentalists today who say that PJM isn't doing enough to get clean energy online.

Now, PJM's had a backlog of thousands of projects in what they call their queue, and these environmentalists say they've prioritized fossil fuel projects over clean energy like solar, which can actually come online very quickly.

But I also spoke to PJM representatives today who say that to accuse them of somehow slow-walking renewables is simply false.

They say actually 90% of the projects they've brought online in the last two years have been renewables.

Now, clearly everyone does agree that there is much more work to be done as temperatures continue to rise and AI continues to expand.

On the campus of the College of New Jersey in Ewing, I'm Joanna Gaggis.

Back to you in the studio, Brianna.

- All right, Joanna, thanks for that report.

- Support for "The Business Report" is provided by the Newark Alliance Presents the 2025 Halsey Fest, featuring the vibrancy of Newark's Arts and Education District and Halsey Street.

Halsey, a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey Fest schedule is available at halseynwk.com.

(upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]