The Office of People’s Counsel, a state agency tasked with advocating for electric utility ratepayers, has released an analysis of legislation from the 2024 session that will affect electric rates, billing, and structures.

From a message sent to interested stakeholders this week, comes this bill-by-bill analysis from the Office of People’s Counsel:

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Legislative bills that will impact you

On Monday, April 8th, the Maryland General Assembly concluded its 446th legislative session. Over the course of 90 days, the 188-member body considered 2,714 bills—ultimately passing 1,053 (39%).

Among this flurry of legislation, OPC identified and monitored nearly 100 bills—and associated cross-files—related to energy, utilities, consumer protection, and state agency operations. These bills addressed everything from the regulation of third-party retail energy suppliers to improving transmission and distribution planning, modernizing the STRIDE statute for accelerating gas infrastructure spending and the EmPOWER programs facilitating energy efficiency and conservation, requiring utility transparency and accountability, incentivizing solar development and electric vehicle charging, establishing a pilot program for networked geothermal systems, and siting and safety of lithium-ion batteries.

Our office maintained a strong presence in Annapolis this session, actively advocating on behalf of residential utility customers on 21 distinct bills and relevant cross-files. All told, OPC provided written testimony 32 times and testified orally 17 times this session.

The recap below summarizes a selection of new laws that impact utility customers.

• SB 1 Electricity and Gas – Retail Supply – Regulation and Consumer Protection: SB 1 makes substantial changes to the regulation of third-party retail energy suppliers of electricity and gas intended to protect residential consumers. The bill requires individual salespersons who sell energy products to be licensed by the Public Service Commission (“PSC”) and prohibits practices that OPC and others argued incentivize predatory marketing to low-income customers, such as incentive-based compensation of salespersons. The bill also increases the monetary penalty for a violation and restricts the allowable terms of a contract for retail energy supply, establishes a cap on retail supplier prices; prohibits most variable rate contracts; and creates a framework for verifying that energy products marketed as “green” do, in fact, support the production of renewable energy. OPC will be heavily involved in the work required to implement the new law.

• HB 864 Energy Efficiency and Conservation Plans: HB 864 harmonizes Maryland’s suite of utility-run energy efficiency and conservation programs, known as the EmPOWER programs, with the Climate Solutions Now Act by transitioning from energy savings targets to greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions reduction targets. HB 864 is a compromise bill that follows two years of advocacy by OPC and others. The bill stops short of eliminating subsidies for gas appliances but makes other important improvements to enable GHG emissions reductions and customer savings–for example, requiring EmPOWER programs to promote beneficial electrification  and to focus savings on the customer side of the utility meter. The bill also includes provisions supporting EmPOWER cost recovery policies that will ultimately save utility customers millions, but will lead to temporary increases in the program surcharge in the near term. See OPC’s factsheet for more details about what to expect.

• SB 570/HB 397 Public Utilities – Thermal Energy Network Systems – Authorization and Establishment (Working for Accessible Renewable Maryland Thermal Heat (WARMTH) Act): Requires large gas companies to develop plans for pilot networked geothermal systems. Pilots would last for two years and gather information to assess how networked geothermal systems may advance the State’s GHG emissions reduction goals, lower the costs of electrification, and avoid gas infrastructure costs. Under the bill, gas companies must work with community groups and local governments to identify pilot proposals that take full advantage of available federal funding and ensure that at least 80% of the pilot system’s customers are from low- or moderate-income housing. SB 570/HB 397 contains consumer protection measures—such as ensuring that customers opting-in to the pilot will not have to pay out-of-pocket for any necessary home electrification or weatherization projects—and cost containment measures—limiting each gas company to 1-2 projects and providing that the PSC can only approve a plan if it is in the best interest of the public and ratepayers.

• HB 1256 promotes various electrification measures while seeking to minimize the impacts that greater electrification during peak hours will have on the need to expand the electric distribution system. The bill requires each investor-owned electric company to establish one or more time-of-use rates that customers can “opt-in” in order to participate. The bill also directs the Commission to adopt regulations for interconnecting “bidirectional electric vehicle systems” to the distribution system. Bidirectional capability means enabling batteries to deliver energy into the distribution system when they are not charging. The bill establishes electric utility pilot programs to compensate owners and aggregators of “distributed energy resources” for “electric distribution system support services.” Distributed energy resources include battery storage, rooftop solar, and other technologies.

• SB 171/HB 139 Landlord and Tenant – Office of Home Energy Programs – Financial Assistance: SB 171/HB 139 requires a landlord of a tenant that pays for utility services through the landlord to provide the tenant with the utility billing data needed to apply for energy assistance. A landlord of a building with five or fewer units must provide a copy of the utility bill, while a landlord of a building with six or more units must either provide a copy of the utility bill or notify the tenant in writing of the total utility costs billed to the landlord in the immediately preceding year, broken out by utility type. OPC expects that requiring landlords to proactively provide this information will remove a potential barrier for renters in applying and potentially result in more eligible customers accessing needed assistance.

• SB 532/HB 468 Commission to Advance Lithium–Ion Battery Safety in Maryland: SB 532/HB 468 establishes a commission to study and make recommendations regarding—among other things—best practices and guidelines to prevent, detect, and suppress lithium–ion battery fires in utility applications, and training and education to better inform first responders and the public regarding lithium–ion battery safety. In light of concerns that emerged during the PSC’s energy storage pilot program about the lack of fire safety planning and oversight of utility battery storage projects, OPC supported the bill and an amendment adding to the study commission’s membership representatives of the PSC and the Power Plant Research Program. OPC expects that the commission’s recommendations will help to inform the permanent energy storage program currently being developed by the PSC.

For a more complete view of OPC’s advocacy before the General Assembly this year, please visit the legislation page on our website.

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Visit the OPC website for more information on their services on behalf of Maryland ratepayers.