We are disappointed by the bill that has emerged from the Maryland General Assembly

News Statement

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June 15, 2006
For Immediate Release

MARYLAND GENERAL ASSEMBLY FAILS TO ENACT LEGISLATION TO ADDRESS LONG-TERM ENERGY PROBLEM

Joint Statement from Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Gary Skulnik, Executive Director of the Clean Energy Partnership

 

We are disappointed by the bill that has emerged from the Maryland General Assembly’s recently concluded special session on electricity. The bill offers artificial short term relief to some ratepayers while doing nothing to ensure long-term price stability. The ratepayers will still be on the hook to pay interest to the utilities for ten years and they are not protected from future price spikes that will come from our over-reliance on fossil fuels for electricity. Lawmakers rejected attempts to require utilities to offer consumers help in making energy efficiency improvements that would lower bills for the long-term. The bill also does not allow municipalities to aggregate their residents to purchase power in large buying pools. In sum, the bill completely ignores the environmental, security and economic costs associated with our state’s over-reliance on fossil fuel powered energy. It seems the utilities had a lot more influence over this bill than environmental or clean energy groups did.

 

While we understand the need to address the immediate concerns of Maryland residential ratepayers, we are calling for leaders to step forward and begin crafting a comprehensive energy plan that will stabilize rates over the long-term, will dramatically reduce global warming gases and other air pollution from our electricity use, will cut consumer energy costs by cutting their energy use through efficiency and conservation, and improves our energy security by reducing our reliance on foreign, unsafe or volatile forms of energy.

 

While lawmakers papered-over the energy crisis we’re in, they could not make it go away. Consumers understand that the world is in the midst of a major shift in energy markets. With developing nations like China and India using more fossil fuels than ever before, with continued instability in the Middle East, with a growing recognition of the dangers fossil fuels pose to the environment and public health, and with our energy infrastructure increasingly at risk from more hurricanes like Katrina due to warming sea temperatures, fossil fuel energy prices are going nowhere but up.

 

The only long-term solution that makes sense is to wean ourselves off our addiction to fossil fuels.

  

• Increase the Renewable Portfolio Standard to 15% by 2015 with a small carve-out for solar energy and the closing of some loopholes in the current law. Allow for the RPS to go to 25% by 2020 if feasible.
• Allow Municipal Aggregation
• Require the utilities to invest at least $20 million a year total in a Public Benefits Fund that will offer financial and tax incentives to consumers who invest in energy efficiency.
• Elevate the Maryland Energy Administration to a Cabinet level agency to give energy authorities the leverage they need to craft policy.
• Create an Office of Clean Energy under the Maryland Energy Administration, charged with the task of devising a plan to have 50% of Maryland’s energy come from non-fossil fueled sources, with bringing in new clean energy industries to the state, and with finding new sources of funding to aid the development of the clean energy industry.
• Invest in programs to educate Maryland consumers about energy efficiency, clean energy and the environmental impact of energy use.
• Stream-line the process for permitting new renewable energy generators.
• Allow state government to enter into long-term contracts of ten or more years for renewable energy.
• Require state government to purchase at least 25% renewable energy.
• Allow utilities to own generation plants if that generation plant is a renewable energy facility.