The Maryland legislative session is in full swing and there’s a lot happening on the ground. CCAN Action Fund’s own Maryland Director, Brittany Baker joined Jamie DeMarco on his Maryland Energy Talk podcast to break down the biggest energy bills of the year and what they mean for Maryland’s clean energy future—good and bad. 

Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Hello and welcome to Maryland Energy Talk for February 26, 2025. What’s the deal with all the energy bills? I’m your host, Jamie DeMarco. It has been an exciting year to launch a podcast about energy issues in Maryland. I think everyone in Annapolis is aware that there are a lot of energy bills flying around, but not everyone is fully up to date on each of the bills, what they do, and how they interact. The goal of this episode is to give you a crash course on the biggest electricity generation bills this year. What they all mean. We’ll talk about the three bills in the energy package that the Senate President and Speaker of the House put together, including the Renewable Energy Certainty Act, the Energy Resource Adequacy and Planning Act, and the Next Generation Energy Act. We will also talk about the Governor’s Energize Act and Review Delegate Charkoudian and Senator Brooks’s Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy act. To help us walk through all these bills. I have a very special guest today, one of the great energy experts and advocates in Annapolis, Brittany Baker, who is the Maryland Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Brittany, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. 

Brittany Baker: 

Hi Jamie. Glad to be here with you, friend. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

It is good to be here with you. So, as I said, there are a lot of energy bills this year. Can you just start out by saying a little bit about why this is happening? What is the situation with the energy grid? Are we in a crisis? Can you just level set a little bit where all of this is coming from? 

Brittany Baker: 

Sure. So to start, energy bills are really high in general this year in particular, and also they’re going to rise again in June. So this past fall, PJM, our regional transmission operator, had a capacity market auction. And in the capacity market auction, the prices went up over 800%. And so that alarmed everyone, especially legislators and those closest to energy policy, because it was very unusual. But that price increase had a couple of factors. One, they downgraded their fossil fuel resources because they haven’t been performing in extreme weather the way that they thought they would. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Everyone assumes fossil fuel works all the time, but actually tend to break down in extreme heat. And we’re getting more extreme so they downgraded the rating of gas plants. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. And also recently, Brandon Shore’s power facility was supposed to shut down, but because of the rulemakings at PJM, they didn’t get their official notice until three months before the plant was about to shut down. So what tool did they have to solve that? Well, what they call a reliability reliability must run agreement. And that’s a billion dollar proposal where they ask them to keep running a little bit longer. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

So all of us are currently paying a lot of money for a coal plant in Maryland to run longer because it’s needed for electricity generation. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. But another piece of this is PJM’s current rules meant that facility, even though we’re paying them billions of dollars to continue to run, wasn’t able to bid into the capacity market auction. So that artificially inflated the prices as well. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

This makes me so upset that we are paying a lot of money to keep this plant online. It doesn’t run very often, just a few days a year when energy uses the highest sort of a peaker plant. But the capacity auction pretended it doesn’t even exist, even though it clearly exists. We’re paying a lot of money for it to really sell electricity to the grid. And PJM sort of manipulated the market to artificially increase that capacity auction price through this paper pushing. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. And so that’s one of the reasons that at least from the legislator and energy policy side, that everyone’s feeling so urgent about solving the utility bill rise, but also from the homeowner constituent point of view, right now we’re really seeing an increase in utility bills because of STRIDE costs and multi-year rate plans put in by the gas distributors. And so what that is is they have this special program where they can get a return on investment more quickly when they build out the gas system. Now this program, STRIDE, was initially designed to, to prevent leaks in our gas system and make sure they had the security they needed to address those leaks in a timely fashion. But instead of focusing on safety, what they have done is just made it a program where they’re replacing the whole gas system for no reason. And another piece of this is recently when the war in Ukraine broke out, the commodity price of gas was really high. But once that resolved, not the war, but at least our ability to get the gas commodity, the gas commodity prices went down. So they really doubled down on STRIDE and the delivery price went up. So our bills started to rise because of inflated gas delivery costs, even though the gas, the commodity price had come down. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

It used to be that when you paid your gas bill—we have a whole episode on this—it used to be that most of what you’re paying was for the gas. Now most of what you’re paying for is the pipes because of stride and other infrastructure. So if any lawmakers listening and want something they could do to lower bills this year, guaranteed the Energy Affordability Act is a good place to start. All that to say. So those are what’s really driving up energy costs now in this capacity auction, as you said, hasn’t even hit bills that’s coming in June. We have that to look forward to. But this capacity auction you mentioned is why there’s energy is such a big issue this year. Because of this intuitive sense of we need to generate more to solve the sort of perceived supply and demand. Really. We’re not in an energy crisis. The PSC says we have enough energy, we can keep the grid on that we’re not about to lose energy or not have enough energy. And you know, I like to say we’re not in an energy crisis, maybe an energy alert. But PJM has been screaming that the sky is falling for years and years. That’s all they know how to do. They tried to tell former Governor O’Malley demand was going to go through the roof. Actually, demand fell this this. They’ve just always been saying demand is going to go through the roof. So this is nothing new. 

Brittany Baker: 

For sure. And let me mention one more thing with that being the case. So in the most recent briefings, PJM talked about how we need more energy resources. But on the other side of that, which the Economic Matters Committee really was able to force them to admit, part of that is because they haven’t been adding new resources to the grid in a timely fashion. And so, and you can speak about this a little bit better than me, Jamie, but for the last, I want to say, five years, they haven’t allowed a lot of projects to come out. And the projects that are currently in the line, also called the queue, are battery storage and solar projects. And they’ve literally been waiting and waiting to try to connect to our grid. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, there are some solar projects coming out of the PGM queue today that entered the PGM queue in 2019. Think about everything that’s happened since then. But as you said, there’s actually 7 gigawatts of solar and battery coming out of the PGM queue. Not all of that is going to get built, but some of it will. And when you couple solar and batteries, they can Deploy dispatchable energy. So that is, I think, helpful context why this is all happening, where this is coming from. I now want to walk through the bills we mentioned at the top and let’s start with a brief overview because we’ve done a whole episode on this as well that people should go back and listen to on the Abundant Affordable Clean Energy act introduced by Delegate Charkoudian and Senator Brooks, SB316, HB398. Can you just briefly give us a top level overview on what that bill does, why it’s great, and why we hope it passes?

Brittany Baker: 

Sure. So that bill does a number of things to ensure that as we move forward in the clean energy transition, ratepayers are protected. And also we’re moving the lever so that clean energy deployment is faster than it has been in the past. So one, it diverts ACP payments because right now alternative compliance payments have really been ballooning. And although we had a system where we would collect those payments and then put them back out to clean energy opportunities through the Maryland Energy Administration, that really takes a long time. And so what happens is it becomes this bucket of money that’s easy to take from. And so instead of collecting ratepayer funds on the front end and then using them as ACPs, them sitting around and needing to go back out to clean energy projects, the bill holds ACP payments in an escrow account so that they can go directly back on ratepayers’ utility bills. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

One of the first things the unaffordable clean energy does is it reduces repair bills by taking these currently a lot of alternative compliance payments being paid, giving them right back to ratepayers. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And I apologize, Jamie, everyone, you can go listen to the episodes. I’ll try to be more top level and not so detailed. So also, the bill reforms the solar renewable energy credit system to make sure each type of solar project, whether it’s community solar or utility-scale solar or net aggregate metered solar or rooftop solar gets its appropriate incentive and not too much and not too little. It also creates a source so that Calvert Cliffs will stay online as long as we need it. And last but not least, it has some very important labor provisions so that as we move forward in the clean energy transition, we’re creating family sustaining jobs. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

And it also has a great battery procurement both on the distribution scale and on the utility scale of 1.6 GW of battery storage on the utility scale, which is what’s coming out of the PGM queue. 

Brittany Baker: 

You’re so right, Jamie. And that’s actually my favorite part. I don’t know how I left that out, because when we think about adding energy to the grid in the most easy, efficient and cheap way, battery storage is it. And we’ve, we won’t be the first doing this. We’ve seen how Texas has just deployed so much battery storage in the last couple of years. It’s really outstanding. And on top of the fact that it can be deployed quickly, you know how the fossil fuel interests have always been saying gas is a bridge to our clean energy future. No, batteries are the bridge. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, they’re the bridge we actually want, not the bridge we want to build and then tear down in five years, which is not a cost-efficient thing to do. The Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy Act is a great act. It can meet our growing energy demands with, you know, clean energy affordably. Listen to the full episode if you want more. But it’s the positive solution that we’re looking towards. One of the many positive solutions. And I should say, you know, all these energy bills, almost all of them, have really, really good ideas that we’re excited to support and work with. Next, I want to talk about Governor Moore’s Energize Act. Energize is an acronym. I apologize that I forget what Energize stands for. But credit whoever came up with that acronym because that’s a long one. Can you talk us a little bit about what provisions are in the Energize Act and how they differ or what they look like. And that’s SB434, HB505. 

Brittany Baker: 

Sure. And thanks again, Jamie, for bringing up the Energize Act. We introduced me already. But I do want to say Chesapeake Climate Action Network is really glad that the governor introduced this bill and we applaud him for this bill. So we hope that it does well during legislative session, but we also recognize all of these bills. I’m just curious to see what happens at the end of all of this. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I sort of joke around and said that sometimes working on energy issues are sort of over in the corner saying, wait, hey, pay attention to us, pay attention to us. Now it feels like everyone’s paying attention to energy and it feels great and just great to see everyone taking a crack at it. And I agree. Really great applause to the governor and his team for putting this bill together. 

Brittany Baker: 

So to talk about what it does. First of all, it freezes ACPs at the current level, Jamie. Or is it at last year’s number? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I think the current level. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And so that’s really important because just as we stated earlier we can’t let the alternative compliance payment situation keep ballooning and ballooning. Somebody has to do something. So that’s their solution to the alternative compliance payment issue. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

And to me the issue right now is that the law has written and has passed in the Clean Energy Jobs Jobs Act has alternative compliance payments declining every year. And this would pause that decline. Alternative compliance payments operate as a sort of upper bound of the subsidy or investment that we give to solar projects in the state of Maryland. Many companies are saying that, you know, because of supply chain issues and other inflation, you know, Clean Energy Jobs Act was passed in 2019. The numbers that we decided on 2019 are no longer going to be sufficient for certain types of solar to pencil. And so by pausing that decline, we can do something to create greater investment in solar in Maryland. 

Brittany Baker: 

The other thing the Energize Act does is it resets the cost caps on offshore wind procurement in order to allow blind bidding so that when companies are bidding into our state, they don’t know how much we’re willing to pay so that they’ll come in a little bit cheaper. So that’s really important to ensure that our offshore wind projects are economical in the long run. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, I think this is a smart innovation that we’ve seen in a few bills this year where if the legislature says we’re willing to pay X amount for an energy project now accepting bids, you tend to get bids where the developer says, it’s funny, it’s going to cost exactly X amount, exactly the uppermost you’re willing to pay. So by making the PSC set a number of how much we’re willing to pay, we’re protecting ratepayers, but we’re also allowing some cost competitiveness. And someone’s been making a great point. Jenn Brock has been saying that the cost caps we set on offshore wind, she was negotiating those cost caps when she was pregnant with her daughter who is now 14. And so I think it is time for these cost caps to be looked at and make sure that they are still what is needed for offshore wind today. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. They need to be updated, but also they need to be a secret. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

[Laughs]

Brittany Baker: 

And the Energize Act does that with nuclear as well. And so it sets up a process of a secret cost cap so that developers, when they bid in, they can make a proposal. And if it’s in the public interest and under the cost cap, then they can get a PPA for their nuclear facility. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

And this would be for new nuclear. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right, New nuclear. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Can you say more about what the bill does in relation to how that works and if there’s any protections or repairs in there?

Brittany Baker: 

Yes, there are protections for ratepayers. So the way it’s set up is ratepayers won’t pay anything until these facilities are actually delivering electrons into the grid. So that’s a really important ratepayer protection to ensure that we’re not just paying for projects that don’t end up delivering energy. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, we’re not putting the money up front. And you know, the whole nuclear procurement piece in this bill I think is very similar to how offshore wind is being procured today by Maryland. And we saw, you know, Orsted, which had a contract with Maryland to provide offshore wind for various supply chain inflation, cost of borrowing money reasons, they were not able to finish that product and they folded and they lost money. But Maryland ratepayers didn’t lose a dime. It’s the same process where if you’re someone who doesn’t believe nuclear can be built or don’t believe nuclear can be built under budget, then these projects are never going to end up costing Maryland a dime. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And another piece is ratepayers are not paying for cost overruns in this either. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

And it says that explicitly. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Which is great. Fantastic. Because that’s what we’ve seen in other states like in Georgia, I know they were building a power plant that went way over. And when it’s owned by a utility and it’s being rate based as it’s being built like that, there becomes a sort of sunk cost where it’s hard to not have the overruns pass on. But this bill does a good job making sure that outcome would not happen to Marylanders. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. And I’m actually from Georgia, so I’ve heard my family members and old neighbors talk about how high their bills are now. Well, because of that. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah. Very, very expensive nuclear plant. Right. So nuclear is expensive, especially small modular reactors. But I think this bill sets up a good policy infrastructure to say if it can happen, if it can happen under budget, then we’re going to be an off taker for it without actually putting more unnecessary risk on repairs. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. Yeah, it’s a great deal. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

So that is the Energize Act. I think a lot of what it does is compatible with the Abundant Affordable Clean Energy Act. I think the one place where both bills couldn’t pass [for the other] is the solar provisions. The solar provisions are pretty different. It’s my opinion that the solar provisions in the Abundant Affordable Clean Energy act are a little More robust and targeted to meet solar where it needs and causing the ACP to client help solar sort of, you know, taking a blunt approach, whereas the administratively determined incentives that are part of the Abundant Affordable Clean Energy Act, I think are more surgical and precise to help every type of solar get exactly what it needs. Other than that, I think the bills are very compatible. 

Brittany Baker: 

Yeah, I agree. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I’m glad that we agree. Next, I want to take us on to talk about the leadership package, which is actually three bills. And I want to say at the top that, you know, legislative leaders have done a great job of putting together a package of proposals that do a lot of really good things for energy and Maryland. There’s a lot of really good ideas in these bills. We obviously think one idea that’s bad is opening the door to fast tracking the construction new gas plant, which we are going to get to. But before we get to it, I want to go through these bills, everything else that they do and the great benefits that they provide. And the first one I want to start out with is the Energy Resource Adequacy and Planning Act, SB909HB 1037, introduced by Senator Hester and Vice Chair Crosby. Tell us a little bit about that bill, what it does and why its work is important. 

Brittany Baker: 

Sure. So this bill establishes the Integrated Resource Planning office to be housed in the Public Service Commission. And this year is really the year that shows why we need this. Because currently Maryland doesn’t have any independent state run agency that’s providing comprehensive energy planning for the state. Now, the Maryland Energy Administration can do this, but they do so much other important work and it kind of overstretches their mission. This is not their mission. And so this is a really important agency that will develop a comprehensive energy forecast and ensure that legislators have the information they need to make these energy choices in a much easier fashion in the future. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I think Vice Chair Crosby had a great metaphor where he said, in the same way that Maryland legislature has a Department of Legislative Services, that gives the legislature sort of unbiased advice on legislation, this is sort of providing unbiased advice on energy issues in Maryland. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Is there anything else that you want to say about this bill or what it does? 

Brittany Baker: 

Yeah, similar to some of the other, like, work groups that we have and planning boards that we have, it also will provide recommendations that are balanced. So looking at our greenhouse gas reductions goals, looking at our energy resource adequacy situation, it will provide recommendations to the legislature to say these are the moves we need to make to reach the clean energy future that we want. And also another thing that I really appreciate about the bill is we’ve been talking a lot this year about how much energy we produce in state and how much we receive from our neighbors. And this office of planning will look at these issues through different scenarios. So what if we had 60% produced in-state? What if we had 80 produced in-state? What if we had 100% of our energy generated in the state? How will those different scenarios affect greenhouse gas emissions reductions, ratepayer bills, all of that? And I think that’s really important because the conversation has been very black and white in terms of that this year. And I think having a more balanced approach and recognizing that, yes, we want more in-state generation, but not at the expense of everything, is important to think about. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I couldn’t agree more. I mean, Maryland, it’s true it imports 40% of our electricity, generates 60% of the electricity we use. But the vast majority of the 13 states and District of Columbia that are in PJM are importers. There’s only very few states that are exporters. You know, you got Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, fleets and fleets of power plants and they export to a lot of the rest of the state. I mean, it makes sense to have a networked energy grid. Every state doesn’t have to produce exactly as much as it consumes, just like we don’t produce all the food that we consume. So it’s good to produce more electricity in state. That reduces our need for transmission, especially as electricity demand grows. But I personally don’t share the sort of overwhelming drive to make sure we generate 100% of our own electricity, especially because doing that is a very expensive proposition for a benefit that isn’t exactly clear to me. And we should. I also meant to say the top when we’re talking about Brandon Shores retiring, some people are saying that we need new power plants because Brandon Shores and Wagner, two coal plants are retiring. But what do we have replacing that? 

Brittany Baker: 

Transmission.

Jamie DeMarco: 

Exactly. We are already paying for a very expensive transmission line that is going to replace those plants and they’re staying online until that transmission comes online. So those plants are being replaced in full. So there aren’t more coal plants retiring that are unaccounted for. The ones that are retiring, we have a plan to replace capacity for capacity. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And I’ll jump in with one more thing there, Jamie. Even though Maryland is kind of in a tough energy moment, we’re not unique like most people are a part of regional transmission organizations and we’re part of PJM, but there are others. So it’s a normal part of being a state to import some of your electricity and partner with your neighbors for your electric grid. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yes, absolutely. The other piece of why this bill is so important is because the whole reason there’s so many energy bills this year is because PJM is banging the table and saying that the sky is falling. Of course we know that PJM is a nonprofit and that a controlling stake of that nonprofit is held by utilities and shareholder companies that are shareholder driven companies that own generation assets like coal and gas that have an interest in saying that the sky is falling and therefore we need to build more gas. And so we are getting advice from an entity that should be the sort of unbiased referee, but that referee is actually on the payroll of one of the teams and having this sort of expertise from an unbiased source I think is more important than ever. 

Brittany Baker: 

So true. And that just reminds me, I know we’re not going to talk about every single energy bill that’s under consideration this year, but I really want to shout out Delegate Lorig Charkoudian and also Delegate Andre Johnson for their very important Utility Transparency Act changes that they’re advocating for this year because again, being part of an RTO is good and PJM just needs some tweaks so that they can function better for us. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

And as that bill addresses, you know, the utilities within Maryland making sure that as we pay our utility bills for not paying for political lobbying or political advertising that those companies are doing of the legislature. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And also the other bill is to make the votes transparent so that we know what the utility companies and what the generation facilities, how their companies are voting at the PJM level. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Because right now we don’t even know.

Brittany Baker: 

It’s behind. A smokescreen, which is hard to fathom. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

So that brings us on to our next bill I want to talk about which is the Renewable Energy Certainty Act introduced by C.T. Wilson and Brian Feldman, SB931 and HB 1036. Tell us a little bit about this bill and why it is so important. 

Brittany Baker: 

Sure. So I love this bill, Jamie, like in a big way. And that’s because this really addresses the equity the that we need in order to move forward in our clean energy transition. So essentially what this bill does is it removes the red tape around clean energy sightings, particularly sitings of large solar facilities over 2 megawatts and also battery storage facilities. And it streamlines the regulations around that. So it does have some regulations, you know, there are setback requirements. There are requirements for four season vegetative screens and there are some other requirements in the bill as well. But it says as long as a project meets the requirements in the bill, counties, local jurisdictions cannot be more restrictive in terms of allowing them to site in their areas. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

So everywhere in Maryland has to follow best practice for siting solar and batteries, but nowhere is allowed to ban them because that’s what we’re seeing right now. Counties in all over the state are saying you can’t have solar in this part of the county or you can’t have more than this anything in Baltimore county they said, like only a certain number of solar projects within each district in Baltimore county, which is totally arbitrary. And at a time when we are trying to meet new growing energy demand, having sort of self inflicted bans on the cheapest, cleanest form of energy is just really unproductive. 

Brittany Baker: 

That’s true, but we’ve also seen where they’ve tried to site projects in a way that’s not following best practices. Putting battery storage facilities, which at least as far as we know have no harms, but it’s not fair to have to put it right next to a daycare right in the middle of somebody’s community. And so following best practices, even in communities that don’t usually speak up about issues and have historically carried the burden of the energy grid, that’s really important too. To say nobody’s community is more important than anyone else’s is equally as important than saying, you know—

Jamie DeMarco: 

So everyone has to follow best practice, but no one is allowed to ban it. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Which I think is important. And, and we were talking about this earlier, but when certain places say you can’t have solar or batteries here, you’re saying no to one energy source and as a result fossil fuels are staying on longer. You know, maybe if we had a higher deployment of solar and batteries around the state for longer, if there weren’t as many restrictions, then Brandon Shores or Wagner, the coal plants would have been able to close when it was economical for them to close. But by banning solar in certain parts of the state, we are prolonging the life of fossil fuels and the pollution of the people who live in the shadows of those plants. 

Brittany Baker: 

So true. And let’s just keep it real, just like you’re saying, banning solar and batteries in some parts of the state leads to the proposition of new gas in the same overburdened and underserved communities where all the other fossil fuel infrastructure is. So what’s the goal here? Shut down fossil fuel facilities and make the clean energy grid equitably distributed across the state. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I’ll also just say briefly on the Renewable Energy Certainty Act. It also has provisions that help crack down on fly by night bad actors in the residential solar industry. We want to make sure that if you are choosing to put solar on your home, which for many people is the biggest, most expensive asset they have, you can trust that you can have certainty that the person you’re dealing with is a good actor who’s not going to screw you over. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

So this is another great bill and we commend the sponsors for introducing it. 

Brittany Baker: 

Yes. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Lastly, I want us to talk about the Next Generation Energy Act, SB937, HB 1035, introduced by President Ferguson and Speaker Jones. There’s a lot of provisions in this bill, some that we like and at least one that you and I do not like. How do you think we should take this on? 

Brittany Baker: 

How about this, Jamie, you say all the things that we like and then I’ll wrap us up. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

That sounds great. One of the things I really like about this bill is it’s addressing the issue of co-location. Right now a data center is free to make a deal with say, Calvert Cliffs, our nuclear power plant, to be attached to them behind the meter. And that would essentially look like taking Calvary Cliffs or a large portion of energy from Calvert Cliffs off of the grid in Maryland without going through any of the normal procedures that normally happen when a power plant comes off the grid. And we as a result would either have to generate new electricity in Maryland or build a new transmission line. This is potentially dangerous to the grid to have a bunch of data centers sort of be built next to power plants behind the grid and just take them offline or take a portion of their electricity offline. The bill essentially says you can co locate a data center and a generation facility, but if you do that, you’ve got to bring your own generation. And as the dentist center, you’ve got to pay to make sure we are building as much new energy as you are using so that from the grid’s perspective, we are made whole and are not harmed. I think that is really a great provision of this bill. The Next Generation Energy act also has language very similar to the Energize act on nuclear procurement. You know, again, repair protections around nuclear. But if it can be built on time and affordably, it sets up the policy infrastructure and incentives for that. So opening the door to new nuclear, if it can meet these requirements. You know, I sort of think of nuclear as Like a lottery, like if it can come in affordably and in time, that is great. It’s going to be a huge benefit to us to have that zero emission baseload power. But we shouldn’t bet the farm on it because it’s still an unproven technology that it can be built at scale affordably in this day and age. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And Jamie, the right payer protections are in there, right? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yes, yes. Those provisions also made it over, which we appreciate. So those I think are the things in the Next Generation Energy act that we’re right here and ready to applaud. Why don’t you talk us through about the rest of the bill? 

Brittany Baker: 

Sure. So I just want to start with we really appreciate leadership for taking this on this year. Energy is important and we do want to lower utility bills and all the messaging around this package has been really fantastic. But the emergency energy procurement section in the bill is just going in the wrong direction and kind of a nonstarter, at least for Chesapeake Climate Action Network. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, I wouldn’t even say kind of a non starter. 

Brittany Baker: 

All the way a non starter. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah. It is just exactly what we don’t need to be building potentially 3 gigawatts of new gas infrastructure in Maryland at time. We’re trying to solve climate change at a time when we have cleaner, faster, cheaper alternatives. This is unneeded and unwanted. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. So let me describe it before we give all of our opinions. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

I got excited. 

Brittany Baker: 

So the emergency energy procurement prioritizes dispatchable energy generation, but the way they describe that dispatchable energy generation, although it does say that you could procure battery storage in this provision, really because of the requirements like the 65% effective load carrying capability and also the fact that it needs to be a certain amount of gigawatts. And also because they’re asking for these proposals by October 1st and many other features of this section really let us know that this procurement that they’re designing will be most likely to procure additional gas generation. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

So they’re going to buy any kind of energy so long as it walks like a gas plant, quacks like a gas plant. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right, exactly. And they’re going to do this by October 1st of this year? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Well, that’s when the procurement would start. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right, but still this year. So the dates in the bill have the procurement starting on October 1st. Then the solicitation period will end 120 days after that. Then the decision has to be made 90 days after that. And then the reward for participating in this procurement is receiving a six month CPCN Process, which is the permitting process. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

And CPN stands for Certificate of Public Certificate of Convenience and need, which is normally a lengthy process and an important process where communities have input and can raise concerns. And to cram that into six months is essentially a rubber stamp. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Which is very concerning because we aren’t sure where these new gas plants are going to be built.  The bill doesn’t specify and we want to make sure they’re not being unequitably cited. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. And I can exactly explain, you know, our reservations are strong reservations to this emergency energy procurement section. So one, we’re in a climate crisis. I don’t know if everyone recognizes. You probably do, because you also experience the extreme heat days and also the droughts that we’re facing and also the record rain events. Because of the basic science of climate change, we’re all experiencing those things. And so to move in a direction of additional fossil fuels in a time like this feels genuinely wrong. Morally wrong. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, absolutely. And will do nothing to lower energy bills. You know, gas plants take a long time to build. Dominion Energy trying to build one is going to take them more than seven years to build. I mean, maybe one day long term down the road a new gas plant could come online, provide new capacity generation and that could lower capacity prices, which would lower bills. But that is so far out and very hypothetical. We don’t know what energy situation going to look like seven years from now when there are things we could do right now to reduce energy bills and we have faster deployment technologies like solar and batteries. 

Brittany Baker: 

Right. Another bullet point is there’s no modeling to show that this amount of new generation is needed, any type of generation really. We do not need 3 gigawatts of additional energy in our state right now, at least not in the short term. I mean, what do you think, Jamie? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

No, I mean this bill reads like it is written by someone who genuinely believes that the grid is going to fail within the next two years, which is what PJM is saying. But they have not shown us the modeling to show that or to find that. And a lot of people are going off the capacity auction increase. But as we talked about earlier, PJM artificially inflated that capacity market increase through changes in how and what they were counting and not counting. 

Brittany Baker: 

Another piece of this is like you mentioned before, we’ve already paid for the transmission projects that are going to cover the energy shortfalls, the small energy shortfalls that we are expecting when Brandon Shores finally retires. And so to build out that much gas generation right now is double-paying. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

No one should say we need a new gas plant because Brandon Shores and Wagner are closing because we are paying over $1 billion for a transmission line to replace them. So we shouldn’t pay for more gas, which will cost another, you know, more than $3 billion 3 to build gigawatts of gas. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. And do we want to mention the green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage provisions? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yes, we should. The bill says that any new gas plant build has to be capable of converting to run on zero emission biofuels or green hydrogen when those technologies become available. We should say that green hydrogen will have a role in the clean economy, but green hydrogen will never be used for daily electricity generation of running a combined cycle gas plant. It’s just the physics don’t make sense because to make green hydrogen, you start with a solar panel and you use it to make hydrogen, then you store and transport that hydrogen and then you use it to generate electricity. And in all those processes there are losses at each process and at the end you end up with electricity, which is what the solar panel gave you to begin with. It just will never make economic sense to run a gas power plant on green hydrogen. 

Brittany Baker: 

And that’s the same thing with carbon capture and storage right now. It’s prohibitively expensive and not currently being scaled, especially not for our regular, regular, old everyday power plants. Again, yes, a carbon captured system is not the same as a scrubber for sulfur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide emissions. It is an involved process that is an evolving, unproven at economic scale technology. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Right. 

Brittany Baker: 

So the last thing that I have to mention that really kind of undoes what the leadership package did in the Renewable Certainty Act is this expedited CPCN really, at least for me, makes me think that these new gas generation facilities are going in the same communities where the coal and oil plants are shutting down. And that doesn’t feel right to me because we’ve had, we have made so much progress in Maryland in particular, and progress that can’t be undone by the federal administration in notifying, consulting with, identifying, creating more data about our environmental justice communities and walking towards treating them right. So why would we then build new gas plants in those same overburdened and underserved communities if we don’t have to? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

You would think we would have moved past the point of fast tracking this sort of polluting, dirty, harmful infrastructure, especially if it likely means it’s going to go in the same communities that have historically had the polluting, damaging infrastructure. 

Brittany Baker: 

Exactly. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

But unfortunately that’s what we’ve got in the bill. So we don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s clearly not a good idea. And we hope that legislative leaders will step up to the plate and find an off ramp here and find a way to move forward this tremendous energy package. A lot, as we said, so many great energy ideas put forward. And it would really be terrible to have all of that tarnished and have the legacy of all of it just be the enormous amounts, billions of dollars of new gas built in Maryland. That would be fossil fuel infrastructure long past the point at which we’re supposed to be net zero as a state. 

Brittany Baker: 

I totally agree, Jamie. And overall, I think this is going to be a good legislative session because I can tell legislators are committed to continuing to walk forward with our climate goals, climate mandates, climate moral imperatives. And I know that they’ll make a better decision than this gas plant in the end. 

Jamie DeMarco: 

That’s right. We’re counting on that. I can’t finish this without mentioning the Brattle study. You know, Google commissioned a study from Brattle comparing the cost of meeting rising energy demand from multiple sources from a new gas plant or from batteries on the utility scale or batteries on the distribution scale. And they found that batteries are cheaper than gas. We can meet our rising energy needs with batteries. With clean energy, we don’t need gas. There’s no need to reach for this old dirty tool. Yet somehow we’re opening the door to it. 

Brittany Baker: 

All right, Jamie, this has been fun. Can we do one more fun thing? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

Yeah, what is it? 

Brittany Baker: 

Would it be possible for me to do the outro this time? 

Jamie DeMarco: 

You want to do the outro? Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Okay. That is so fun. Thank you for asking. And here is the script if you want to read it. 

Brittany Baker: 

One day, Marylanders will wake up to a world where our electricity is 100% clean and that clean electricity powers every aspect of our lives. It will be more affordable, more prosperous, and a healthier world than the one we live in today. When that day comes, we will spend less on energy. The days when a foreign autocrat invading their neighbor could cause the cost to heat your home in Maryland to spike will be long gone. Instead, our energy bills will be as predictable as an Internet bill. And the average Maryland household will save up to $4,000 annually in reduced energy costs. Right now, solar batteries and onshore wind can produce electricity at a lower cost than coal or gas. Heat pumps can heat your home for less than their flu polluting alternative and electric vehicles are cheaper to drive than their gas equivalents. And the cost for each of these clean technologies are dropping fast. Right Now, Maryland sends $10 billion out of state every year purchasing oil and gas. But on that day, all of that money will stay in Maryland because we will, for the first time, be generating our own energy instead of importing it. There will be better public transportation options, so fewer people will be forced to buy a car. And all of us will spend less time in traffic. We will have more jobs. Marylanders as a whole will see a $2.5 billion increase in personal income and a net gain of over 27,000 jobs for the state. And we will all be healthier. Marylanders will enjoy 1.2 billion in public health benefits. That means fewer people living with pollution induced chronic illnesses like asthma and fewer emergency room visits, putting downward pressure on health care costs for everyone. We will wake up to that better world one day. And whatever role you play in bringing that day closer, thank you.

Take action: Urge your Maryland legislator to say NO to new gas in the state!