New Jersey Governor Murphy Reveals Plan for New 2024 Energy Master Plan

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Jan. 23 announced that the process of updating the state’s Energy Master Plan, or EMP, has begun and will be released in 2024. The EMP serves as New Jersey’s blueprint to attain 100 percent clean energy by 2050. The new EMP will incorporate the state’s updated climate goals and the impacts of recent state and federal policies that will help speed up the state’s clean energy transition.

The 2019 EMP outlined a strategic pathway to methodically address the state’s energy system and its relevant greenhouse gas emissions, or GHG and air pollutants, whilst at the same time expanding and creating an innovative economy that invests in communities and public health. The 2024 EMP will build upon this pathway and incorporate new information on recent state and federal policies, most notably the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act. The EMP will focus on data driven modelling to determine the economic and environmental impacts of clean energy policies.

Moreover, the EMP outlines a set of objectives to put the state on a roadmap to achieve their clean energy goals and builds upon previous EMPs to consider for the entire energy system in the state, taking into account electricity production, transportation, and usage in commercial buildings. Furthermore, the EMP includes directives from the Clean Energy Act of 2018, the Zero Emissions Vehicle Memorandum of Understanding, and the Global Warming Response Act of 2009 to reduce GHG by 80 percent in 2050, relative to 2006 levels.

The update will address a list of strategies enumerated in the 2019 EMP: reducing consumption and emissions from the transportation and building sectors; accelerating deployment of renewable energy and distributed resources; maximizing efficiency and conservation and reducing peak demand; and decarbonizing and modernizing the state’s energy system; supporting community energy planning and action in underserved communities; and expanding the clean energy innovation economy.

The 2024 EMP integrates progress information acquired through interagency cooperation and stakeholder feedback. The alliance between agencies ensures the state efficiently achieves its overall clean energy and climate goals. As it stands, stakeholder meetings which were originally planned for early 2023 will be pushed back into later this year, to allow the EMPs Committee time to complete the report.