Gov. Phil Murphy’s Energy Master Plan will change your life. And I mean that quite literally. By mandating total electrification, the Murphy administration is changing the way New Jerseyans cook their food, heat their homes and drive their cars, and doing those everyday things will become exceedingly more costly. You think New Jersey is expensive now? Just wait until the full EMP takes effect. 

While all aspects of the EMP are monumental changes in policy and our Jersey way of life, building electrification is the most individually intrusive and expensive part. And outrageously, the people of New Jersey haven’t had an opportunity to weigh in on this expansive plan, except for few short hearings over Zoom. That’s because their representatives in government — their legislators — have been left out of the process. 

There has not been one vote by the state Legislature to electrify New Jersey homes and businesses. Apparently, the governor has decided he will do the job of all 120 legislators himself. It’s time for the Legislature to reclaim their power from the executive and decide what policy they as the policymakers want to implement.  

Building electrification is a fundamental cornerstone of the EMP, which states that “the Building Sector should be decarbonized and largely electrified by 2050…” Unfortunately, it doesn’t get the same attention as offshore wind. The uproar over the cost of a $1 billion offshore wind subsidy will pale in comparison to the uproar over the cost — into the hundreds of billions of dollars — to achieve Gov. Murphy’s goal to electrify every building in the state.

This summer, the governor directed the Board of Public Utilities to implement a building-electrification incentive program. The utilities must have their implementation plans to the BPU by Oct. 2. Legislation establishing the program the BPU is implementing has yet to pass the Legislature. And the electric-vehicle incentive program was enacted only after a law was passed by the Legislature. So where is the delegation of legislative authority for this BPU building electrification incentive order? 

The BPU alleges its authority is found in a 1977 law. If this were true, then the same law could have been used as justification for all the other energy policies in the past dozen years enacted only after a law was passed by the Legislature. The BPU’s legal sophistry continues by cobbling together legal authority claiming “building decarbonization” through electrification is equivalent to “energy efficiency.”  

Mandate in waiting 

But why the concern over an incentive since the Murphy administration has stated repeatedly this is not a mandate?   

That’s how the electric vehicle mandate (which begins in 2026) started, with an incentive. And the governor’s staff is already hard at work to make the building electrification mandate a reality. The BPU has retained a consultant to guide the Murphy administration on how it can contort the Uniform Construction Code Act into a mandate for building electrification.  

So, the governor needs legal authority from the Legislature to implement his building electrification incentive. And those who don’t believe him when he says this is merely an incentive need assurance that this isn’t a building electrification mandate-in-waiting, as his incentive with cars was.  

There’s an easy solution. 

The Legislature needs to pass and Gov. Murphy needs to sign S-2671 or A-3-935. These identical bills give a broad delegation of authority for a building electrification incentive program and prohibit any building electrification mandate unless and until the Legislature so enacts. Last session, the predecessor to S-2671 passed the Senate 35-3. All the bill does is put the question where it appropriately belongs, before those we entrust to make policy, the Legislature. 

But what if the Governor vetoes S-2671? 

Again, there’s an easy solution. 

The Legislature then exercises its authority to invalidate an executive action which exceeds legislative intent.  

‘Runny egg’ rule 

In January 1992, the state Department of Health adopted a regulation that prohibited patrons in diners and restaurants from ordering eggs over-easy. Even though it was the pre-internet days, the “runny egg” rule quickly went viral nationally and the regulation was subsequently withdrawn. The incident demonstrated the need to constrain unchecked executive power. In November of 1992, the citizens of New Jersey amended the Constitution to give the Legislature the ability to invalidate regulations that were not consistent with legislative intent.  

This power is extraordinary and has only been exercised once, when the Legislature invalidated a regulation of Gov. Chris Christie’s regarding civil-service rules. The case went to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the Legislature’s action. Interesting how executive excess has gone from the manner of how you like your eggs prepared to the manner in which they are cooked.  

Any initiative that individually overhauls housing, environmental or energy policy would have an enormous impact on the state’s citizens and economy and would necessitate the thoughtful and measured input of lawmakers — who must answer to their constituents engaged on all sides of the issue, and with whom the constitutional authority to enact this policy vests. Building decarbonization does all three at once. The notion that the governor can unilaterally dictate this policy is inconceivable.  

Building electrification — along with all aspects of the Murphy administration’s “electrify everything” Energy Master Plan — will change our homes, our lifestyles and especially our finances. The people of New Jersey deserve to have a voice in this process through their elected representatives in the Legislature. This issue is too important to let the executive evade our democratic process. 

— Editor’s note: This op-ed is on behalf of the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey and the New Jersey Propane Gas Association.