Publications

In our previous research published with the New Jersey State Policy Lab, we posed a question that is increasingly on the minds of ratepayers across the state: Are data centers raising your electric bill? Based on our quantitative analysis of residential electricity data (which is inclusive through 2024), the answer was a cautious “mostly not […]

Over the past 30 years, heat has become the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, with 210 million Americans at risk of health threats due to increasing extreme heat waves. Meanwhile in New Jersey, 181 people have died from heat-related causes between 2000 and 2020; the most recent heat wave earlier in […]

As urban areas have developed in New Jersey, some water bodies such as ponds, streams, and wetlands have been filled in, developed over, or rerouted through stormwater systems. In some cases, this process may have increased local flooding. In addition, rerouting surface water into stormwater systems has increased the amount of water flowing through these […]

If you have opened an electric bill recently, you have probably noticed the same thing many households have: it is higher than it used to be. Nationally, average residential electricity prices rose by roughly 20 percent between 2021 and 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.[1] In some places, the increase has been sharper. […]

The North American electric grid is often described as the largest machine ever built. It requires constantly balancing electricity supply with demand while maintaining strict reliability standards to keep outages rare. Because of this, new power plants cannot simply be “plugged in” to the grid. When new generation is proposed—such as New Jersey Governor Mikie […]

As we finish creating digital representations, or features, of historical water bodies for our project to create a dataset of historical water bodies in New Jersey, we begin exploring how these water bodies have changed over time. In GIS, the process of quantifying land cover change over time is known as Change Detection. Esri’s ArcGIS Pro […]

It is my privilege to serve as the Executive Director of the New Jersey State Policy Lab. Since its launch in 2021, we have worked to build something meaningful—producing high-quality blogs and reports, sharing them widely on our website and across social media, and holding ourselves to a standard of excellence in everything we do. […]

Amidst accelerating climate change and deteriorating soil health, the agricultural sector faces unprecedented challenges. Regenerative agriculture, an approach centered on soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem resiliency, offers critical tools for building climate resilience, improving long-term soil productivity, and enhancing local food system stability. This report, based on a survey of New Jersey’s regenerative farmers and […]

New Jersey faces years of rising electricity rates and potential supply reliability issues spurred by increased demand from data centers in the 13-state PJM Interconnection Grid region, which will continue to be an ongoing problem as long as the state remains a net energy importer. With changes in federal energy policy scuttling the Garden State’s […]

In the mid-2000’s there was concern over “peak oil” and rising oil prices. In response to this, the International Energy Agency (IEA) commissioned an analysis of how to Save Oil in A Hurry (IEA, 2005). We worked together on this report and also published a summary in Energy Policy (Noland et. al, 2006) and in […]

Our project to create a dataset of historical water bodies in New Jersey first began by finding and georeferencing maps of historical water bodies in the state. As detailed in a previous post, georeferencing determined the precise location of these maps on the Earth’s surface. This process required several months to complete. Once complete, the […]

In our previous post, we outlined a looming economic paradox: the AI revolution, while technologically dazzling, runs on an astonishing amount of physical power. We know that electricity prices are spiking across the country, and there is strong evidence that the voracious energy appetite of data centers is a primary driver (Luccioni & Jernite, 2025). […]