Gov. Mikie Sherrill (and many others) has made it clear: PJM Interconnection is the cause of New Jersey’s energy affordability crisis.
Her only hedge, going back to when she was candidate Sherrill, is whether it’s a matter of greed or incompetence.
In the summer of 2025, she said New Jerseyans were “appalled” looking at their utility bills and blamed PJM’s mismanagement for the spike in energy costs.
As governor-elect in January, she vowed to push for reforms so ratepayers “are not caught in an endless cycle of mismanagement and unsustainable rising costs.”
And earlier this month, when she joined a bipartisan group of governors taking aim at the grid operator, she said the goal was to “ensure PJM puts the people, not member profits, first.”
Seems fair to say that Sherrill may think it’s greed and incompetence.
And, to be fair, there may be some truth to the second idea.
After all, PJM’s members voted out the chair of its board in spring of 2025. And its CEO either left voluntarily — or left voluntarily before he no longer had a choice.
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Asim Haque, PJM’s Senior Vice President of Government and Member Services, is not easily rattled.
Tuesday afternoon, he gave a keynote address at the New Jersey Business & Industry Association’s Energy and Environmental Policy Conference in Woodbridge. And, as he has before in this state — and presumably in some of the 12 other states that make up PJM — he offered a polite defense of the organization.
He explained how PJM:
- Operates as a nonprofit, with a budget approved by federal regulators, and makes nothing when power prices rise;
- Is trying to keep up with a surge in demand driven largely by data centers, which can be built in a year or two, while new power plants take about seven;
- Approves projects to connect to the grid, but doesn’t decide what gets built or where. Of about 49 gigawatts of projects cleared to connect, only about 2.4 are in New Jersey.
There was nothing combative about the presentation.
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Haque brought slides. He had pie charts. And he didn’t sound like Baghdad Bob (a great reference, if you get it).
He took questions from the crowd at the end of his talk — and stayed after the presentation to take more.
This is a man who represents the organization that is at the root of all energy evil?
Haque doesn’t see it that way. He thinks the facts show PJM is no more responsible for high prices than anyone else. He says PJM doesn’t profit when bills go up. But he also says he understands why so many people don’t see it the way he does.
And when asked directly what it’s like to be at the center of the storm, he simply said the job is bigger than politics.
“If folks want to blame us, that’s certainly their prerogative,” he said. “But we’re going to keep going everywhere, talking about what we’re seeing on the system from just the perspective of a nonprofit impartial grid operator.”
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Haque has a quick response when asked what the biggest misperception is.
“That we somehow benefit from high prices,” he said. “Not even remotely the case. We certainly do not have a rooting interest in high prices.”
Haque doesn’t pretend that others aren’t benefiting.
“If you own a generation unit in PJM right now, you are making more than you did a few years ago,” he said. “That’s what the market does.”
And despite all the shots from Trenton and elsewhere — he calls it “political agitation” — Haque only had kind words for the governor’s office.
“I really admire the team that she has brought in,” he said.
So, what’s to make of all this? Maybe the better question is whether they want the same thing.
“We are facing an energy affordability crisis,” Sherrill said this month.
Haque doesn’t disagree.
“Keeping the lights on and keeping prices affordable is something that every U.S. citizen and everybody in the PJM footprint deserves,” he said.
