Advocates are pushing for Baltimore County to ditch natural gas in new homes and require that they be all electric.

While that proposal is getting a mixed response from County Council members and County Executive Johnny Olszewski, two other Maryland localities are on board and a state legislator plans to introduce legislation that would require new homes to be mostly all-electric statewide.

Jamie DeMarco, Maryland’s Director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said it needs to happen for the state to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 60% by 2031.

“Electrifying new buildings is the lowest of the low hanging fruit,” DeMarco said. “It’s the first step we have to do. If you’re in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging, and if you’re trying to decarbonize the building sector, the first thing to do is to stop building new buildings that use fossil fuels.”

David Lapp, the Maryland People’s Counsel, whose office represents residential utility customers, said it would be a smart move.

“It’s much more cost-effective to build new buildings to be all electric than to build them to use fossil fuels,” Lapp said. “I think that this is the direction that we’re headed in, the question is how fast?”

Del. Adrian Boafo, a Prince George’s County Democrat, plans to introduce legislation in the 2024 Maryland General Assembly, to require electrification of new construction statewide, except you could have a gas stove if you want one.

“People love their gas stoves,” Boafo said.

It’s gas furnaces he wants to get rid of because they're the big polluter.

Statewide electrification has been proposed before but went nowhere. In another nod to it being a controversial issue, Boafo said he is willing to compromise to perhaps phase it in.

“Maybe we start out with state buildings and commercial buildings first and then we phase in the residential piece as well,” Boafo said.

DeMarco is lobbying Baltimore County to take action on its own.

Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski said the county needs to find ways to become more electrified but stopped short of supporting requiring it in new home construction.

“I’d have to look at a specific proposal about what’s being proposed and under what timelines to really make a declarative decision on any piece of prospective legislation,” Olszewski said.

No council member has proposed such legislation and you get a mixed bag of responses when you ask about it.

• Republican David Marks said he thinks it’s worth supporting. 
• Democrat Pat Young said it should be looked at. 
• Democrat Mike Ertel said he’s not sold on the idea. 
• Republicans Wade Kach and Todd Crandell are undecided. 

Council Chairman Izzy Patoka, a Democrat, said he is interested in the issue, but that it’s a matter of “bandwidth.” Patoka said there currently is a lot on the County Council’s plate, including passing an overdue 10 year master plan, working through the quadrennial comprehensive zoning map process, considering a proposal to expand the size of the council and examining Olszewski’s proposed annual budget which he will present in April.
Patoka acknowledged electrification could be a tough sell, harkening back to last year’s battle over banning single use plastic bags.

“People are reticent to change and that’s a pretty major one,” Patoka said. “We’ll have to see how much traction it gets and I’m willing to take a look at that.”

Democratic Councilman Julian Jones said it’s worth considering but he’s getting blowback from builders.

“A couple of them have told me that customers want gas in some cases,” Jones said.

Howard County Councilwoman Christiana Rigby knows about that. She said last year as she was winning the Howard County Council’s support for developing a report on how the county will electrify, she heard from a lot of people who were worried she wanted to unhook their gas stoves.

“If you have a gas stove today, no one is coming for it,” Rigby said.

She calls climate change an “existential threat.”

“I really hope that both surrounding counties, but also the state, takes a look at our report and looks at all the other information coming out about electrification and how we can really create progress together in the state,” Rigby said.

In 2022, the Montgomery County Council passed legislation that will require all-electric building standards for new construction by Dec. 31, 2026.

The legislation in both Montgomery and Howard were opposed by utilities. They warned that the power grid might not keep up with demand.

But a study of the grid released last month by the state’s Public Service Commission said otherwise. It found that the grid can handle the added load necessary for the state to make its 2031 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60%.

Nick Alexopulos, a spokesman for Baltimore Gas and Electric, said the company’s data finds that study “a bit optimistic.”

Maryland’s long-term goal is for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

Alexopulos said BG&E supports electrification, but warned it will take massive infrastructure upgrades that will be costly, disruptive and will take a long time to build.

“We project that we will need to build or upgrade roughly 200 substations in BGE’s service area over the next 20 years,” Alexopulos said.

He said it can take 8-10 years to build a substation.

“The prospect of everyone having an electric car, everyone having an electric heat pump, everyone having an electric dryer, everyone having an electric water heater, etc. etc., is going to add a lot of load to the system,” Alexopulos said.

David Lapp, the Maryland People’s Counsel, said over the past 12 years, BG&E has spent about $4 billion on its distribution and transmission systems.

“So if we’re having a problem with high electrification, we should be asking where that $4 billion went,” Lapp said.

As for whether Baltimore County will take up new home electrification this year, Council Chairman Patoka is noncommittal but adds county officials can’t sit on the sidelines and be observers as the climate changes.

“There’s so many ways to address this and I feel like in what my responsibility is in this neck of the woods, we can chip away at it as best we can,” Patoka said.