New Jersey lawmakers are opening the door for the owner of the state’s largest utility to build a new nuclear power plant.
A bill, introduced Thursday by state Senate Environment and Energy Committee Chair Bob Smith (D), could put utility customers on the hook to pay for at least part of the construction of enough new nuclear energy to power more than a million homes.
It creates a state-backed incentive program to develop 1.2 gigawatts of nuclear power, according to a draft of the bill obtained by POLITICO. The title of the bill — the “New Jersey Energy Security and Affordability Act” — was posted, but the full text is not yet available online.
The bill, injected in the final weeks of Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) administration and a lame-duck legislative session, is meant to help fill demand for energy from new data centers and fill the hole left by the failure of the state’s offshore wind program.
