AIBRIEF
Sherrill's compromise creating a separate utility rate class for data centers landed eight days before Jersey City's ordinance, putting the state's data center policy on two opposing tracks.
Jersey City moved on July 15 to ban data centers as a principal industrial use, joining a wave of New Jersey municipalities using local zoning tools to slow hyperscale development. The city introduced Ordinance 26-057, sponsored by Mayor James Solomon and Councilmembers Jake Ephros (Ward D), Joel Brooks (Ward B), and Eleana Little (Ward E), to block future sites after roughly five existing downtown facilities cleared permitting without Planning Board review. The new law does not affect those existing centers.
Eight days earlier, Gov. Mikie Sherrill had taken the opposite tack, signing a three-bill package: the Data Center Fair Share Act (S731/A796) creating a separate utility-customer rate class for data centers, a repeal of the return-on-equity adder, and the Advanced Grid Technologies Act. Her office says the package will save New Jersey's 3.6 million utility customers more than $1 billion a year, with $25 bill credits for every household and an additional $150 credit for low- and moderate-income families. The state approach keeps grid hookup costs on the data centers themselves rather than spreading them across household power bills, though Data Center Coalition VP Dan Diorio warned the separate rate class could make New Jersey less competitive. The two tracks now run in parallel: moderate cost-allocation rules in Trenton, prohibitionist zoning in Jersey City.