House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County), Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and leaders in the House and Senate announced a package of bills Monday they said would help ease energy prices. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters.)
Legislative leaders said Monday that they will introduce a package of bills designed to produce more energy in-state and lower consumers’ utility bills.
The legislation would encourage construction of a new power plant in Maryland, produce more regulatory certainty for solar energy and battery storage, and require state government and Maryland’s utilities to do more long-term planning.
It comes as energy prices are spiking and electricity supplies are diminishing, at the same time the state is trying to stand up a data center industry, which will strain energy supplies even further.
Maryland imports 40% of its electricity, and that number could grow in the years ahead. PJM, the regional electric grid operator, projects that there may not be enough energy to meet rising demand in its 13-state network as soon as July 2026, four years earlier than originally projected. PJM has been wrestling with a backlog of applications for new energy generation throughout the grid.
“We need to address these issues and protect everyday Marylanders and business owners across the state from unaffordable costs,” House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) said at a midday news conference outside the State House. “The three bills announced today will lower consumers’ utility bills, ensure the reliability of our energy grid, and create more predictability in our state’s regulatory environment as we move toward a more sustainable future.”
Top-ranking lawmakers for weeks have been teasing their plans to cobble together a comprehensive package of bills to address Maryland’s looming energy crisis and climbing costs — and the fact that the state is falling short of climate mandates and clean energy goals.
The weight of their announcement Monday was evident by the number of lobbyists and advocates lurking on the fringes of the news conference, trying to pick up early intel. Republican Senate leaders, who have blamed state environmental policies for ratepayers’ costly electric bills, were also standing on the sidelines, ready to offer barbed remarks.
Even before Monday’s announcement, a range of political players, industry stakeholders and environmentalists have attempted to influence the energy policy debate in Annapolis this year.
Rising electricity prices may be the result of a combination of market forces, government policies, regulatory schemes and a variety of other factors, including PJM’s performance. But every relevant player has an angle — and a proposed remedy.
Several pieces of legislation addressing the energy crisis have already been introduced, including one from Gov. Wes Moore (D) that seeks to boost nuclear energy and other carbon-free energy sources.
The House Economic Matters Committee has hearings scheduled Thursday on two potentially consequential pieces of legislation: A bill from Del. Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery) that would expand clean energy production in the state, and a consumer protection bill from Del. Elizabeth Embry (D-Baltimore City) that would scale back the state’s reliance on natural gas over time.
But it’s clear now that the leaders’ legislative package will be the focal point of the energy policy debate in the weeks ahead. The three bills had not been formally introduced or posted online by Monday evening, so the full details are not known.
The package will consist of a bill from Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) that would direct the Maryland Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, to set up a procurement process to attract a new power plant development somewhere in the state. That plant would most likely be fueled by natural gas — still a potent fossil fuel, but one that is considered “cleaner” than coal or oil (the state’s last coal plants are expected to close by 2027).
Ferguson said lawmakers envision the new plant eventually transitioning to develop cleaner energy, though it was not immediately clear if there would be a timetable attached to the legislation. It also isn’t clear how such a project would be financed — though legislative leaders vowed that the costs would not be passed along to electric and gas ratepayers.
It also appears the legislation could loosen restrictions imposed during the state’s deregulation of the electricity market in the late 1990s and allow utilities to be among the bidders to operate the envisioned new power plant. Utilities are currently only allowed to deliver energy to consumers, but not generate it. One of the bills calls for the PSC to study whether utilities can be in the mix for power plant ownership and operation.
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“More energy generation in Maryland means more control for the state, with numerous benefits, including less imported dirty energy from surrounding states and fewer transmission lines impacting private property rights, farmland, and conservation easements,” Ferguson said. “Our goal of achieving net-zero generation remains unchanged, and the Next Generation Energy Act reflects our commitment to transition to the cleanest technologies as they become available.”
Another bill, the Renewable Energy Certainty Act, sponsored by Senate Education, Energy and Environment Chair Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery) and House Economic Matters Chair C.T. Wilson (D-Charles) is designed to expedite solar generation and battery storage by removing certain local roadblocks — a notion that’s sure to be controversial with many county governments and other local stakeholders.
Feldman said the bill “creates regulatory certainty that projects meeting statewide standards will be sited and permitted.”
Del. Brian M. Crosby (D-St. Mary’s), the House Economic Matters vice chair, and Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard and Montgomery), are the chief sponsors of the Resource Adequacy and Planning Act. That bill would set up an office within the PSC to conduct long-term planning and modeling, working in conjunction with Maryland utilities, in an effort to decrease the state’s reliance on PJM forecasting and regional vagaries in the energy markets.
“It would be key to us to look forward every two, four, 10 years, to see what needs we have,” Crosby said.
Legislative leaders said their legislation would also encourage the development of small nuclear reactors, a new technology that does not depend on the huge swaths of real estate that conventional nuclear power plants require. And they said they hoped to rebrand nuclear as a “tier one” fuel, eligible for the same state incentives as other forms of clean energy.
The lawmakers conceded that many of these initiatives could be years away from fruition, and that consumer savings would not be immediate — though Ferguson said that he hoped a fast procurement process by the PSC to find an entity willing to build a new power plant would lead to more confidence and stability in Maryland’s energy markets.
‘It’s never acceptable to build another fossil fuel power plant’
Environmentalists are eyeing the leaders’ legislation warily. While they applauded the bill to boost solar and energy storage, they expressed dismay that lawmakers would contemplate expanding the use of fossil fuels in Maryland even as the state is struggling to meet climate mandates.
“It’s never acceptable to build another fossil fuel power plant during the climate crisis,” said Jamie DeMarco, a lobbyist with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Josh Tulkin, the Maryland Sierra Club chapter director, lamented that environmentalists weren’t consulted on the content of the leaders’ legislation as it was being drafted, and said he found it “disturbing” that the measures could lead to more fossil fuels being generated in the state.
“It’s very concerning that they’re explaining the importance of studying new energy sources while potentially placing some significant new costs on Maryland ratepayers,” Tulkin added.
In a statement provided to Maryland Matters, Paul Adams, a spokesperson for Constellation Energy, which operates the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland and the Conowingo Dam along the Susquehanna River, praised aspects of the legislative leaders’ bills, but cautioned that they need to guarantee continued competition in the electric marketplace.
“We commend Maryland lawmakers for recognizing the importance of advancing clean nuclear and eliminating regulatory obstacles for new energy resources to keep electricity reliable and affordable for all Marylanders,” he said. “Going forward this legislative session, any final package should encourage competition among energy providers and producers — which has been proven to benefit consumers — and avoid counterproductive energy requirements on new industries that would drive business to neighboring states at a high cost to both Maryland energy consumers and our state’s economy.”
Last week, Senate Minority Leader Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore) published an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun that blamed several state environmental and climate laws passed by Democrats for the rising costs of energy in the state. After standing on the sidelines Monday listening to the Democrats’ describe their energy proposals, Hershey said he found their arguments “underwhelming.”
Hershey said the state is charging ratepayers $500 million a year for clean energy subsidies that have yet to produce much energy and that the Democrats’ plans won’t offer immediate relief. “This is a lot of pie in the sky,” he said.
Beyond the legislative debate to come, other political leaders are scrambling to deal with the energy price increases.
Last week, Dels. Adrian Boafo (D-Prince George’s) and Marlon Amprey (D-Baltimore City), who serve on the Economic Matters Committee, garnered some publicity after sending a letter to PSC Chair Fred Hoover, urging the commission to impose an immediate moratorium on proposed price hikes from state utilities.
“The people of Maryland deserve a break,” they wrote. “In that spirit, we ask the Public Service Commission to impose an immediate moratorium on all public utility rate increases for the foreseeable future. This will provide beleaguered ratepayers with the chance to catch their breath after this recent onslaught of cost spikes. It will also provide Maryland policymakers, industry experts and consumer advocates with the continued opportunity to address our state’s near-term and long-range energy crisis.”
More significantly, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) last week reached a settlement with PJM, the regional grid operator, to set a lower cap on prices the next time PJM holds what’s known as a “capacity auction,” which helps determine consumers’ electricity costs. That settlement will impact electric rates starting in 2026.
Moore had sent a letter to PJM earlier in January, urging the grid operator to lower its capacity market caps.
Emily Scarr, senior adviser to the Maryland PIRG Foundation, said Shapiro and Moore deserved credit for pressuring PJM.
“But while this is welcome news,” she said, “Marylanders still face major utility bill spikes this summer, and the underlying problems with PJM remain. Our state leaders should continue to pressure PJM to fix its broken interconnection process, stop holding up clean energy, and reform its decision-making structure to prioritize the public interest.”