New Jersey Orders Data Center Power and Water Reports Every Six Months, Then Seals Them
- Data Centers Grid Capacity Regulatory
Marin Holt
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- 9 minutes read
- Reporting cadence: Semiannual for 3 years
- First filing deadline: 3 months after enactment for existing sites
- Public release floor: Aggregated data from 5+ facilities only
- Tax credits cancelled: 50 million of a 00 million program
- Legislative vote: 39-0 Senate, 76-3 Assembly
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed S3379 on August 27, 2026 at the South Brunswick Public Library. The law orders data centers in the state to file energy and water use reports with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities twice a year for three years. Sites that have run for at least a year owe a first report within three months of enactment. New sites owe one within six months of opening. The Legislature passed the bill 39-0 in the Senate and 76-3 in the Assembly at the end of June. Sherrill signed a second bill the same day. That one cut the remaining $250 million from the $500 million Next New Jersey Program and ended the state data center tax credit.
What operators must file
Each report carries the data center name, operator, address and commencement date. Operators list total kilowatt hours consumed, their utility supply agreements and any on-site power supplies. They report the energy drawn by IT equipment separately. They report water input in cubic meters and break down water sources by percentage. The board can require more.
Operators that took a state financial incentive file a longer list. They add power usage effectiveness, water usage effectiveness, energy reuse factor and renewable energy factor. They also report average IT intake air temperature, average waste heat temperature, renewable electricity consumed, and waste heat reused in kilowatt hours.
S3379 sets no capacity threshold. A 10 MW site files on the same schedule as a 500 MW campus. That is a different test from the rate law Sherrill signed on July 7. S731/A796 created a separate ratepayer class and defined a large data center at 50 MW and above.
Enforcement Reality
The bill text sets no penalty for a late or false filing. It names no auditor. Operators self-report, and nothing in the statute lets the board test a filing against utility interval data.
The disclosure rule cuts harder. Information submitted to the board is confidential and not subject to disclosure. The board publishes aggregated and anonymized figures only, drawn from at least five facilities, within 30 days. A town negotiating with one operator cannot read that operator filing. Neither can a ratepayer advocate building a case around a single campus.
The duty also expires. It runs three years. The board then decides whether to keep it permanently.
Why It Matters
Load forecasting is the practical stake. PJM plans capacity against demand it can see, and utilities size transmission against load they can predict. Data center operators have treated consumption as a trade secret, which is the gap Sherrill named at the signing. Semiannual filings close part of that gap for the board.
The aggregation floor decides how much of the value reaches anyone else. Five facilities is a coarse bucket in a state with 66 data centers across 48 operators, by the count Data Center Map publishes. Siting fights and single-customer rate cases both turn on one campus. The statute keeps that number sealed.
Operators should read the incentive clause closely. A firm that accepted state money now reports PUE and WUE on a fixed schedule. Those two ratios expose cooling design and water strategy in a way a raw kilowatt hour total does not.
What the critics say
Environmental groups called the law thin. Jaclyn Rhoads, executive director of the Pinelands Alliance, said reporting energy and water use after the damage is done is the antithesis of guardrails, and asked for a construction moratorium. Ben Dziobek of the Climate Revolution Action Network noted that companies will report without independent verification or audit. Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, who sponsored the bill, said the requirement should start an ongoing public record rather than sit as a one-time disclosure.
Sherrill answered the criticism directly. Companies that want to build in New Jersey, she said, have to play by the state rules. The transparency law is the second of the four pillars her administration announced in May. The Department of Community Affairs issued the third on August 25, a Local Finance Notice on community benefits agreements sent to all 564 municipalities.
Critical Perspective
The law produces a dataset almost nobody can use. Filings are confidential by statute, and the board may publish only figures aggregated across five or more facilities. A county arguing with one operator over a single campus gets nothing it can cite. That is the exact scale at which every New Jersey siting fight is actually happening.
The accountability also lands late. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority already awarded $250 million to one project under the Next New Jersey Program, and that award survives. The bill cancelled the $250 million not yet spent. So the operator that took the money keeps it, while the transparency duty falls hardest on entrants who never got a credit. Add no penalty clause, no audit right and a three-year sunset, and the state has bought a reporting habit rather than a lever.
Sources
- New Jersey Legislature, S3379 bill text
- New Jersey Monitor
- NJBIZ
- New Jersey Business Magazine
- Data Center Dynamics
