The Maryland General Assembly’s long-awaited mega energy bill arrived late last week, and the House already gave final approval to the 104-page package on Tuesday.
HB1532 started as House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk’s (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s Counties) 12-page energy proposal and has since been amended with 128-pages worth of clean energy generation incentives, electric grid enhancement guidelines, utility company regulations and data center guardrails.
Now dubbed the “Utility RELIEF (Reducing Energy Load Inflation for Everyday Families) Act,” the energy omnibus is backed by the House speaker, as well as Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and Gov. Wes Moore.
The bill’s most clear-cut cost-saving measure for ratepayers is the direction of $100 million to pay down Maryland’s EmPOWER program.
EmPOWER was created in 2008 as a way to aid limited income households in upgrading their homes in ways that could reduce energy usage.
This could include adding wall or floor insulation, hot water system improvements, lighting and refrigerator retrofitting, as well as furnace cleaning and repairs.
EmPOWER is no cost to qualifying households because all ratepayers help fund the program through an average $10 to $20 surcharge on their utility bill.
The $100 million downpayment is expected to save Marylanders at least $150 annually.
That $100 million was initially proposed by the governor to be sent to ratepayers as direct rebates, resulting in an average one-time $40 credit.
That idea was met with some bipartisan backlash in recent months, being referred to as “too small to be noticed by most people.”
$36.8 million would also be used to partially offset ratepayer costs for the Limited Income Discount Program, which gives utility companies the ability to provide discounted rates to low-income customers.
The program was recently authorized by the Maryland Public Service Commission – the state’s utility regulator – and utilities must submit the required paperwork to implement the program before Jan. 1, 2027.
It is expected to save eligible customers up $1,400 per year on utility bills.
The Utility RELIEF Act would direct an additional $100 million to a grant program, operated as a reverse auction, for new renewable energy generation projects and storage capacity, or batteries.
“Why that's important is because [batteries] added to renewable [generation projects] allows that energy to be bid into the capacity market, which is what lowers costs for all ratepayers, for lower supply costs,” Ferguson told members of the media on Friday.
Under the bill, utility companies would be required to prioritize enhancing the electric grid in ways to increase the capacity and efficiency of existing transmission lines, as well as undergo more regional oversight for expensive transmission projects that utilities previously garnered federal approval for, but not state-level approval.
The legislation includes some expectations for power-hungry data centers, however they are not legally binding.
The General Assembly is requesting data centers pay for their own energy infrastructure upgrades, prioritize hiring in-state workers for construction, purchase significant amounts of energy capacity to offset the cost burden on ratepayers and to engage with the local community they intend to set up shop in.
“...We are taking action where we can: holding utility companies accountable, moving faster to build new energy generation, and delivering $100 million to lower energy bills for Maryland families. While Washington keeps making life harder for working people, we are staying focused on the issues that matter—lowering costs, making Maryland more affordable, and protecting Maryland families,” Moore said in a statement.
The bill gained initial approval in the House of Delegates on Tuesday, but not before over three hours of debate on twenty Republican-introduced amendments.
“There are a few elements of this new mega bill that make sense and, frankly, finally give credence to what our Republican Caucus has been saying for years – we cannot afford the multiple surcharges and artificial taxes and costs tacked on to everyone’s monthly energy bills,” House Republican Leader Jason Buckel (R-Allegany County) and House Republican Whip Jesse Pippy (R-Frederick County) said in a statement.
The amendments ranged from eliminating various clean energy and low-income assistance programs entirely to some technical changes.
While one of the major features of the bill is reducing the amount ratepayers contribute to the EmPOWER program, Del. Latoya Nkongolo (R-Anne Arundel County) argued the assistance measure should be eliminated altogether.
“We have built a system where extra costs are added to [ratepayers’] energy bills to fund programs that they may never use or benefit from, and this amendment is about correcting that,” Nkongolo said during floor debate.
Nkongolo also pointed to data showing only about 78,500 Marylanders have been served by the program since its creation, out of about 587,000 who would qualify.
“I recognize that not every low-income qualifying person has qualified from the low income program, but tens of thousands have, and so we don't want to take things away from them, which is what this amendment does,” said Chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee Marc Korman (D-Montgomery County).
Korman noted the bill does make several changes to EmPOWER, including rolling back the program’s greenhouse gas reduction goal from 2.5 percent each year to 1.75 percent each year from 2027 through 2029.
That percentage will slowly increase again after 2029.
The Utility RELIEF Act also eliminates the EmPOWER surcharge from gas customer bills entirely – meaning only electric customers will continue to pay for the program – and makes some administrative changes in the hopes of reducing overhead costs.
“[EmPOWER] has reduced our peak energy need, and whatever you want to do for more generation in this state, having to build less of it would be a positive to our goal,” Korman said in defense of the program. “Everything we build, we'd be more effective if we don't have this peak load increase as a result of being purposefully inefficient.
Buckel introduced an amendment that would have stricken all the measures from the bill that don’t directly correlate with ratepayer relief.
“The amendment leaves everything that we believe actually produces rate reduction effects– takes out all the other stuff. Takes out all the other stuff about solar, takes out all the other stuff that some of the activists would want, and just focuses on rate reduction,” Buckle said, arguing the bill still does not go far enough to reduce utility bills.
His amendment, along with all other Republican amendments, were either rejected on near-party lines or withdrawn.
The funding for these energy initiatives would come from Maryland’s Strategic Energy Investment Fund (SEIF), a designated pot of money to promote statewide clean energy projects.
The fund has ballooned in recent years, accumulating revenues from carbon dioxide allowance auctions, as well as penalty payments from utility companies when they fail to meet state renewable energy standards.
Those auctions are a result of Maryland participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
RGGI states set caps on how much carbon dioxide power plants can emit into the atmosphere with the goal of reducing emissions altogether across the region.
Large fossil fuel-fired power plants must purchase enough carbon dioxide allowances to cover their emissions – those auction revenues go into the SEIF.
In addition to tapping the fund for hundreds of millions of dollars in energy-related projects, the state is also planning to draw down on it by $292 million just to balance a projected statewide budget deficit of $1.5 billion.
Not only have Republicans criticized the revenue sources for SEIF in general, arguing utilities pass the costs onto ratepayers, but GOP lawmakers are further questioning the fund’s integrity.
“I am not a card carrying Sierra Club member. But I got to tell you, I'm even mad about this. All the environmentalists that have been saying we need RGGI so that we can save the planet, well, guess what, the governor just stole your money,” said Del. Brian Chisholm (R-Anne Arundel County), making a case to his colleagues that Maryland should pull out of RGGI entirely.
But Democrats have repeatedly argued that RGGI is working.
A July 2025 report from RGGI says carbon dioxide emissions from covered power plants in the region have declined by 46 percent since the program’s inception and auctions have yielded more than $9 billion for clean energy projects.
“RGGI proceeds themselves, that are paid by the generation facilities, go directly into increasing energy efficiency. What does that mean? That means we have less demand for energy across the state,” said Del. Dylan Behler (D-Anne Arundel County).
The omnibus also includes all the provisions of House Bill 1, which was the chamber's main energy cost-saving priority earlier in the session.
The House convened for an unusual second session at 5 p.m. on Tuesday to pass the bill for a third and final time with eight Republicans supporting it.
Various Republicans who rose to speak on the bill during its final vote said they don’t believe the Utility RELIEF Act goes far enough, but they are willing to vote yes on a measure that will save ratepayers any amount of money.
Now it’s up to the Senate to take up the measure, where the bill will likely receive some modifications.
If the Senate version is not identical to the House of Delegates’, it will go to a conference committee to reconcile the differences.
BGE, Delmarva Power and Pepco released a statement Friday saying they will continue to review the legislation “to ensure the proposed measures would not have any unintended consequences for our customers.”
