Today, Governor Mikie Sherrill announced her four-pronged plan to address the growing impact of data centers on the environment and communities, increase transparency, and hold them accountable. New Jersey Sierra Club Director, Anjuli Ramos-Busot, joined Senator Burzichelli, Assemblyman Bailey, IBEW and Mayor Stanzilis during this announcement.
This four-pillar approach to establish strong guardrails for data centers includes:
- Establishing fair-share rules so data centers bring their own clean energy and contribute investments to the grid we share to help lower costs.
- Enacting measures to improve transparency, starting with requirements to report the purpose of the data center and their energy and water use.
- Directing the development of strong statewide standards and guidelines for Community Benefits Agreements to ensure these facilities address impacts like noise, light, heat and pollution while delivering lasting local investments.
- Securing commitments around labor to create good-paying construction jobs and support prevailing wages and local trades.
In response to Governor Sherrill’s announcement, NJ Sierra Club Director, Anjuli Ramos-Busot, issued the following statement:
“The Sierra Club commends Governor Sherrill for this comprehensive approach to ensure data center accountability and transparency in New Jersey.
Rising energy costs are on the minds of families across the state, and the rapid expansion of data centers threatens to drive costs even higher. At its core, this is an issue of fairness – hardworking New Jerseyans should not have to shoulder the costs of unchecked data center development.
Today’s announcement demonstrates that protecting the health of our communities and our environment does not come at the expense of creating policy that promotes affordability and economic development. In fact, strong environmental safeguards and smart economic policy can go hand in hand.
Governor Sherrill’s plan establishes some of the guardrails urgently needed to ensure data centers are held accountable.
Today’s announcement is a strong step in the right direction toward protecting New Jerseyans, our environment, and keeping our energy affordable.
We look forward to working with Governor Sherrill to hold data centers accountable and achieve strong land, water, and air quality protections in response to this development.”
Background on Sierra Club’s Data Center Work
The Sierra Club has been leading the effort to demand better from Big Tech at the national, state, and local levels by calling for protections that would ensure new data centers do not harm ratepayers, the environment, or communities.
In New Jersey, the Sierra Club has advocated for data center accountability overall as well as a package of data center accountability bills, hosted educational webinars on how data centers are changing our energy landscape and how communities can stand up to Big Tech, entered a lawsuit against the Princeton Nurseries data center facility in 2025 , worked with grassroots communities and organizations in local fights, and launched a community organizing toolkit for residents including a sample ordinance for municipalities to prevent harmful developments with strong safeguards.
The Sierra Club advocates nationally and in every state for strong safeguards and guardrails to ensure that data center development is responsible and beneficial to the communities where they operate. Given the complexity of energy markets across the country, we prioritize that the costs and infrastructure as a result of data centers are borne by the industry and not by individuals on their utility bills, and that their development is not shifted into marginalized communities or into states with weak environmental regulations. Data centers are a national issue, and in New Jersey, we are working to ensure that state regulations keep pace with this emerging industry. If data centers are developed, we will ensure that they do so with the utmost community, environmental, and affordability protections. The Sierra Club does not support a data center moratorium for the reasons outlined above.
You can read more about the New Jersey Chapter’s work holding Big Tech and data centers accountable on our website here.