Legal Strategies to Lower Building Emissions in Metropolitan New Jersey

Jake Newcomb

October 2025

New Jersey’s metropolitan areas need to dramatically lower their building emissions to combat climate change and protect the health of local residents. The State and local governments face three major challenges in their efforts to implement building decarbonization strategies.

First, federal and state laws preempt New Jersey municipalities from adopting stricter standards that could lower building emissions.

Second, competition between municipalities creates a collective action problem that disincentivizes legal reform.

Third, building emissions reduction strategies can create unintended harms, such as worsened indoor air quality and gentrification.

To avoid these challenges, individual New Jersey municipalities can utilize metropolitan equity strategies and create regional cooperation plans. However, the most impactful way New Jersey can decarbonize buildings may be for the state legislature to amend its building emissions benchmarking law to enable the state government to decarbonize buildings more effectively.

Read the memorandum in its entirety below:

Legal Strategies to Lower Building Emissions in Metropolitan New Jersey