Md. is STRIDing backwards

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As I write this shortly after Earth Day 2025, I have on my desk a 46-page publication, “The Efficient Home,” described as presenting a “smart lifestyle, curated for you by BGE and EmPower Maryland.” Its many ideas about how each of us in our homes and workplaces could conserve energy sounded promising, so I decided to look further into EmPower Maryland.

I learned that the EmPower Maryland Energy Efficiency Act, passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2008, was created to offer incentives to consumers to achieve energy efficiency and promote conservation efforts. I also learned that we, as consumers of energy, are paying for this program – “The Efficient Home” informs us that “EmPower Maryland programs are funded by a charge on your energy bill.”

Under the program, Maryland’s five largest investor-owned electric utilities, Baltimore Gas and Electric among them, offer assistance to households and businesses to save energy and costs using a variety of incentives, “such as free or discounted energy audits, weatherization, and efficient appliances.”

So, for example, scheduling a Quick Home Energy Check-up could lead to examining your insulation levels and air leakage or changing the air filter in your heating and cooling system. It might involve installing efficient-flow showerheads or changing from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs, which are reported to last 15 times longer than the traditional bulbs.

I’m concerned about the warming planet. I think we should all be doing our part to mitigate the damaging effects of climate change. So, why am I not happy when I read about these helpful suggestions? Because there is a high degree of hypocrisy here by the utility company and complicity on the part of the Maryland legislature,

While we are being told of all the little steps that we as individuals can take, we can’t forget the giant STRIDE that BGE is making that counters these efforts. In this instance, STRIDE stands for the Strategic Infrastructure Development and Enhancement Act, which was passed by the General Assembly in 2013.

In the name of public safety, following some high-profile deadly gas line explosions elsewhere in the nation, there was a push to replace old cast-iron pipelines with new infrastructure. The 2013 legislation seemed to forget the concerns about climate change that had led the General Assembly to pass legislation five years earlier that would meet the state’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and essentially phase out the use of natural gas by 2050.

According to a December 2023 report written for the Abell Foundation by Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, the 2013 law locked Maryland into a “decades-long, state-sanctioned gas infrastructure spending spree” for BGE and other utilities. This new investment, which will be reflected in the public’s higher utility bills, is taking place as fewer residents will be using gas for cooking or heating their homes.

• The higher utility rates will be a particular hardship for low- and moderate-income utility customers.
• Key recommendations in the Abell report included:
• The STRIDE program as it stands should be ended.
• The Public Service Commission should order utilities to identify specific areas of material or structural risks to safety and make improvements giving priority to those documented risks.
• A commitment should be made to a completely electric residential sector by 2045 and community solar should be adopted.
• New buildings in both the residential and the commercial sectors should be mandated to be all-electric in the near term.

As of February 2025, with the authorization afforded by STRIDE, Maryland’s gas utilities have spent more than $2 billion on new gas infrastructure. These include the large gas pipelines known as “mains,” the smaller customer service pipes, as well as meters and other infrastructure.

In his testimony before the PSC last year, David Saunders, a certified climate change professional, urged Excelon, BGE’s parent company, to switch from natural gas to electric infrastructure. He noted that, “A modern heat pump is more efficient than a gas furnace, and an induction stovetop is quicker than a gas stovetop. Instead of investing a billion dollars in gas, let’s invest in substations and transmission lines for clean wind, solar, and nuclear.”

Saunders continued, “This is an opportunity to help Exelon live up to its stated values by shifting investment from [natural gas] to electricity.”

Joe Nathanson is the retired principal of Urban Information Associates, a Baltimore-based economic and community development consulting firm. Since 2001, he has written a monthly column for The Daily Record and can be contacted at [email protected]