in our spotlight on business report tonight more fingerpointing with the upcoming electric rate hikes the state board of public utilities yesterday said it'll require new jersey's power companies to come up with plans to defer some of the price costs expected to hit residents utility bills this june that's when the average bill is set to spike by 25 bucks democrats are praising the idea as a way to ease the burden on rateayers but republicans immediately blasted it as a gimmick ahead of the fall elections without getting to the root problem it's just the latest escalation in what's become a full-blown battle senior correspondent joanna gagas reports fingerpointing and blame games are nothing new in politics but right now they're being played with your wallet courtesy of spiking energy costs here's a simple breakdown pjm is a company that sets market rates for energy supplied across 13 states new jersey is one of them the costs are set through auctions held every three years now here's where it gets complicated out of nowhere pjm which is the transmission grid for new jersey in our area raised their prices in a single year by almost 10 times and nothing has changed by that amount supply may go up a little bit demand may go up a little bit inflation but those are a few percent not a factor of 10 well it used to cost $28 in what's supposed to be a competitive auction bid suddenly cost $270 that's the reason for the increase generation makes up anywhere from 45 to 65% of a residential electric bill so somehow the auction got out of whack and that market fluctuation will mean a spike in your energy bills members of the senate and assembly held a joint investigative hearing a few weeks ago to better understand what happened at this year's auction they've since sent pjm a letter asking for clarity on a range of issues and governor murphy sent a letter to fk the federal energy regulatory commission asking for an investigation into possible market manipulation during pjm's auction saying the increased costs will be in the billions in a statement pjm told us it has not seen evidence that supports a finding of market manipulation in the 2025-26 capacity auction but we take such allegations very seriously adding that pjm will follow any directives we receive from fk at a recent press conference fk chairman mark christie spoke out in defense of pjm a lot of this criticism that i've been seeing in the media directed at pjm and its management and blaming them for everything that's wrong with the pjm capacity market i think is is in many ways misplaced and it's and a lot of it is because of state policies that have sort of come to a head those state policies are solely to blame in the minds of republicans in new jersey who also say pjm is the scapegoat for governor murphy's failed energy master plan that they say is the reason for new jerseys lack of energy supply new jersey is now being forced to purchase electricity off the grid and as a result of that we're seeing these higher spikes and it's you know you can't um try to completely electrify the state you can't have an energy master plan that completely relies on renewables and and not have enough supply from those renewables to meet that increased demand senate minority leader anthony buco says seven years ago new jersey was a net exporter of electricity and today we import 40% part of that was the decommissioning of the oyster creek nuclear generating station the state had been counting on wind energy to come online in the next several years but that's proven nearly impossible to get started so far but democrats say there are other ready sources of energy just waiting for pjm's approval there are literally thousands of projects ready to go across this pjm market the northeast basically including about 80 in new jersey and over 90% of these are renewable energy they're they're basically solar and so the real question is why has pgm not allowed thousands of renewable energy projects that are ready to go to produce more energy than we need right now in 2023 the average projects that got that approval had been waiting for 5 years in the queue um for pjm to say it could go ahead and connect to the grid um so these are projects that the market is trying to build to bring down costs for customers but pjm is standing in the way through its broken approval process that takes years and years can two things be true that one the wind industry did kind of fall on its face here in new jersey and two perhaps pjm's process needs to be upgraded and that projects need to be brought online faster i don't have a problem with looking at how pjm conducts the auction and their methodology but pjm is not solely to blame for this crisis i mean that's absolutely clear and yet so much remains unclear like how fk will respond and whether any relief is in sight for residents and businesses pjm says it's reformed the approval process to bring projects online faster but that's not going to change the $25 increase that'll hit energy bills starting june 1st for nj spotlight news i'm joanna gagas