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New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has announced a series of new solar initiatives aimed at reducing the state's emissions by 80% by 2050. The initiatives include the state's largest solar award to date, which will transform contaminated sites such as landfills into solar installations.
The Governor also announced a $156 million award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of the Solar For All competition. This funding will support solar programs that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from clean energy. It will support solar access for multi-family affordable housing, establish pathways to residential solar ownership for low-income households, expand community solar initiatives, support solar workforce development, and enable critical grid upgrades to support more solar generation in New Jersey.
The Solar For All award is expected to deliver approximately 175 megawatts of solar energy to benefit 22,000 low-income households within the first five years of funding. This is expected to result in approximately $250 million in total energy bill savings over 30 years for residents in newly connected households. The award is also expected to result in CO2 emission reductions of 240,000 short tons and enable 90 megawatt-hours of energy storage associated with multi-family housing.
In addition to these initiatives, Governor Murphy has proposed $40 million in his Fiscal Year 2025 budget for electric grid modernization to enable clean energy interconnection and support a strong union workforce. These grants could support the innovative development of comprehensive and regional resilience strategies to address threats to the state’s power system infrastructure, prevent outages, enhance the resilience of the electric grid, and deploy state of the art technologies to enhance grid flexibility.
The Governor made these announcements in Berkeley Township, Ocean County, where CS Energy’s new Eagle Solar I and II community solar projects are nearing completion. The 10 MW projects will power approximately 1,600 homes across the region while providing a 20% discount to all subscribers, including 51% low and moderate income (LMI) customers. This is expected to produce annual household savings of more than $200 and just under $7 million over the 20-year lifetime of the project for all 1,600 homes.