ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers are debating several pieces of energy legislation this month that could affect how BGE operates and what ratepayers pay for electricity.
WATCH: BGE wants to generate energy in the state, ratepayer advocates are against it
One separate bill would allow BGE's parent company, Exelon, to build and operate energy generating facilities in Maryland. Emily Scarr of Maryland PIRG raised concerns about the financial risk that arrangement could pose to ratepayers.
"Investors who build generation, whether it's solar, gas, batteries, their investors bear the financial risk. But if we let BGE get into the power generation, it's ratepayers who are at financial risk if they overspend, if the asset becomes stranded, and that's a risk we can't take. It just doesn't work to have a monopoly utility participate in a competitive market," Scarr said.
BGE says the bill would focus on community solar and reduce the amount of energy Maryland has to import.
"This bill would allow a different solution for customers where we can increase the amount of generation in the state, which is desperately needed, and the byproduct of that is that the prices in the capacity market could decline," said Brittany Jones, BGE's vice president of government and external affairs.
Another bill would end a process that allows BGE to get approval for infrastructure work after it is completed, rather than before. Delegate Lorig Charkoudian, a Montgomery County Democrat, argues the current process has been used to drive up costs for ratepayers.
"Stride's been used by the utilities to build as much as they can as fast as they can so that they can keep charging ratepayers for those assets over the course of the next 40, 50 years. We have a chance to break that this year as well," Charkoudian said.
BGE argues the process allows the company to fix issues faster and is more transparent than the previous method.
"There is an extraordinary amount of oversight already for these things. Leaks have gone down and customers would very likely be paying more today if we had not done this work proactively, compared to our doing it because doing the work cuts down on leaks," BGE spokesperson Nick Alexopolous said.
Lawmakers are considering a number of other energy-related bills and are likely to package several pieces of legislation together in an effort to bring down current rates and limit future increases.
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