On February 13, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic Butchko testified before the Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee in support of SB 34 – Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity – Overhead Transmission Lines – Conservation Easements.
This bill places additional considerations and requirements for transmission lines seeking to go on areas under a conservation easement.
The 2025 Maryland General Assembly is facing a historic number of complex generational challenges. One of the loudest issues to arise has been Maryland opposition to the Piedmont Reliability Project. The Project, which crosses Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick Counties, effectively creates an “extension cord” across some of our state’s prime agricultural lands, providing Pennsylvania-generated energy to Virginia-based data centers, with little direct benefit to Marylanders. As the General Assembly debates how to address this and other energy challenges, one of the biggest underlying issues will be how to prioritize now competing state priorities (i.e., energy demands and environmental goals).
Since the 1960s, counties and the State have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into conservation, and to date, counties have actively limited development in these preserved areas. The intent of SB 34 is to respond to the Piedmont Project by requiring both the PSC to more deeply consider the impact of projects on conserved lands and for the applicant to more thoroughly justify why a project must overlap with these sensitive areas. As transmission infrastructure upgrades may uniquely be accomplished by upgrading existing lines or using existing land, counties join the sponsor in wanting to protect the finite number of conserved lands.
SB 34’s cross-file, HB 640, was heard on February 20 in the House Economic Matters Committee. Dominic Butchko testified in support of this bill.
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