To be sure, it’s early — very early — in the life of a bill that could give the state sweeping new power to push New Jersey businesses and residents toward electrification. But Eric DeGesero is already sounding the alarm.
The bill, S-4214, cleared the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, 3-2, last week. DeGesero, who testified in a hearing, said it would let the commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection decide how to meet the state’s climate targets. That could include mandating electric vehicles, heat pumps, electric stoves and smart thermostats, and banning natural gas, heating oil and propane.
That has DeGesero, a spokesman for the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey and the New Jersey Propane Gas Association and long the loudest voice in the state against electrification mandates, concerned.
“It’s a blank check of authority,” he told BINJE afterward.
The bill has a long road ahead. It still has to clear the Senate Budget Committee and the full Senate. The Assembly would then have to pass its own version, and none has been introduced. Then it would need Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s signature.
DeGesero, as he always does, is making sure the views of his group are being heard now.
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On paper, the bill is a response to Washington.
Sen. Raj Mukherji (D-Jersey City) is the sponsor. The bill writes the federal “endangerment finding” into state law. Under that finding, the EPA determined that greenhouse gases endanger public health, which let it regulate them under the Clean Air Act. The EPA repealed the finding in February.
The bill would add greenhouse gases to the list of air pollutants the DEP regulates under the state’s 1954 Air Pollution Control Act. It would also require the DEP to set statewide emissions standards, including rules for fuels and vehicles, to meet the targets in the Global Warming Response Act.
Mukherji, in a statement, said the federal repeal “jeopardizes our residents’ well-being.” He said the state should “take swift action to uphold the Endangerment Finding.”
DeGesero said the bill’s real reach is in its fine print. It runs 19 pages, he said, but only about three pages are new text. Those pages let the commissioner do whatever he decides is needed to hit the state’s climate targets.
“It leaves it up to his imagination,” DeGesero said.
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What could the commissioner do with that authority? According to DeGesero, a lot:
- Vehicles: mandate electric vehicles. The federal government has long regulated anything that moves, so the state’s power there is questionable. That doesn’t matter, DeGesero said, because the bill grants it anyway.
- Homes: mandate electric heat pumps and electric stoves.
- Meters and thermostats: mandate smart meters and smart thermostats, which DeGesero said worries him most. Those devices can talk to each other, DeGesero said. On a hot day, the commissioner could order utilities to lock your thermostat at 78 degrees.
DeGesero noted that utilities elsewhere already do that through voluntary programs, where customers trade control on peak days for a discount. He pointed to Colorado in 2022, when thousands of customers found their thermostats locked. Those customers made a bad deal, he said, but at least it was a deal.
This bill, he said, could make it a requirement.
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DeGesero said his main complaint isn’t about any single appliance. It’s about who makes the call.
He read the committee a DEP statement from May 2026. It said “transformative decisions” about how New Jerseyans live would be needed to hit the state’s 2030 and 2050 climate goals.
“If I want something transformative done, I want the legislature to do it,” he said.
DeGesero said the bill lets lawmakers hand off decisions they’d rather not make themselves.
“It just says to the DEP, ‘You make all of the tough decisions that we, as the legislature, want made but are afraid to make,’” he said.
In the hearing, Committee Chair Sen. Bob Smith (D-Piscataway) said he saw it differently. Smith’s argument, as DeGesero described it, was that lawmakers aren’t scientists. With Washington stepping back, he said, the bill tells the experts to follow the science.
DeGesero said he doesn’t disagree with leaving technical limits to scientists.
“But that isn’t what this bill does,” he said. “This bill is a policy decision, not a scientific direction.”
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DeGesero said there’s one big difference from the last time New Jersey fought over gas stoves.
Then, he said, the push came from then-Gov. Phil Murphy. DeGesero told the committee S-4214 is “the bill that Phil Murphy was missing,” the legal authority Murphy wanted but never got from the Legislature.
This time, DeGesero said, the push isn’t coming from the governor’s office.
“Governor Sherrill’s never said a word about any of this, right?” he said. “She’s focused on all of the above and affordability. This is now the legislature.”
DeGesero said it’s also the first serious electrification fight in New Jersey in some time. The debate cooled in 2023, after a federal appeals court struck down Berkeley, California’s ban on natural gas hookups in new buildings.
DeGesero hopes the bill goes no further than the Budget Committee. He noted that second referrals are common for controversial bills; the Legislature’s polluter pays bill got one too. Plenty of bills get sent to Budget and never come out.
He isn’t counting on it. Several steps remain, but DeGesero said that doesn’t make last week’s vote a small one.
“It is a big step, because the bill is as sweeping as it is in giving power to one person,” he said.
You can be sure DeGesero will be following it — and fighting it — every step of the way.
