Clean Energy Projects Stuck in Multi-Year Backlog, Maryland, Surrounding States Push for Fix

A coal-fired power plant in Baltimore will continue to operate past its scheduled retirement date next year, emitting pollution while cheaper clean-energy projects that could help replace it are stuck in the queue to be connected to the regional power grid.

It’s precisely this type of problem that a recent federal regulation seeking to alleviate, requiring regional grid operators to conduct long-term planning that takes into account states’ needs, including their clean energy goals.

But elected officials and advocates in Maryland and the broader region are concerned that their grid operator, PJM Interconnection, is slow to comply. PJM requested a reconsideration of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order in June, calling it “overly stringent in several areas.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois are among those who object, urging PJM in June to speed up transmission expansion. On Monday, the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators urged the grid operator to begin planning immediately.

“Maryland utility customers are now paying enormous costs because of PJM’s failure to plan the transmission system to meet customer needs,” said David Lapp, head of the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, a state agency that represents Maryland utility customers in federal and state rate cases. “The long-term regional transmission planning required by the regulations should help address these failures.”

Clean energy projects waiting to connect to the PJM grid are stuck in a five- or six-year backlog, said Thomas Rutigliano, senior advocate for the Climate & Clean Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. New and expanded transmission lines would ease the bottleneck, he said, and FERC’s 1920 order is intended to make that possible.

Maryland is among the states that have long argued that PJM should consider clean energy and growth goals when planning its transmission modernization. From energy-hungry data centers to the future electrification of buildings and transportation, there is a lot to plan for.

Utilities have a huge influence on transmission planning and dislike FERC’s order, as Inside Climate News reported earlier this year, because it allows entities other than shareholders to have a say in the decision. Supporters of the rule had feared it would be delayed by challenges. PJM is one of two grid operators to file a motion for a rehearing.

“This decision threatens to further set back progress in integrating renewable energy sources like wind and solar into our energy mix,” said Ohio Rep. Casey Weinstein, one of a group of state lawmakers who wrote to PJM urging it to comply with the order.

In a statement to Inside Climate News, Weinstein said Ohioans deserve a grid that supports the transition to cleaner energy and promotes economic growth. He called on PJM to address utility-scale wind and solar projects that have been stalled in the pipeline. “By implementing the transmission upgrades and consumer protections required by FERC’s order, we can ensure that these projects deliver tangible benefits to Ohioans, increasing our energy security and creating local jobs.”

Jeffrey Shields, a spokesman for PJM, said the organization recently expressed its intention to immediately begin talks with states. “PJM supports long-term planning and what FERC is trying to accomplish, and has actually been working with states and stakeholders on what a long-term planning framework could look like, even before Order 1920 is issued,” Shields said in emailed comments.

PJM agrees the rule will help with long-term planning and a more holistic assessment of system needs, it added. The grid operator previously said its request for reconsideration was to “seek flexibility to implement its requirements in a less prescriptive manner” and “reflect its unique circumstances and regional needs.”

“PJM will continue to support discussions with our states to promote long-term planning and compliance with Regulation 1920,” Shields said.

“There is no time to waste in planning a transmission system that will meet our future energy needs.”

But elected officials say they want action, not discussion.

“As legislators from states in PJM’s service area, we are writing to urge PJM to immediately implement FERC’s new 1920 Transmission Planning Regulation. We view this rule and PJM’s effective implementation of it as critical to our responsibility to ensure our constituents have access to reliable, affordable, and clean electricity,” the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a nonpartisan network of environmental legislators, wrote in a July 15 letter to the grid operator’s board and management.

NCEL’s letter added that current transmission planning through PJM is inadequate.

“There is no time to waste in planning a transmission system that will meet our future energy needs,” the group said.

Maryland Rep. Lorig Charkoudian, a Montgomery County Democrat and one of the signatories to the NCEL letter, said the FERC order directs grid operators to plan for a variety of scenarios that can reliably launch clean energy projects.

“There are hundreds of gigawatts of capacity waiting to come online. But they are all backed up because PJM is not doing long-term, coordinated transmission planning that balances all the different needs of the states,” Charkoudian said, blaming some of the delay on fossil fuel interests and utilities that have significant voting power in PJM.

“That’s why I’m calling for changes to PJM’s governance structure because right now we have outcomes that benefit fossil fuel (energy) producers and transmission grid owners, which prevents us from achieving our clean energy and economic development goals,” she said.

Lapp, the Maryland attorney, lamented that FERC’s order came too late to prevent one of the consequences of PJM’s failed transmission planning: Maryland customers now must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant operating longer than planned because its 2025 retirement could create grid reliability problems.

“With the Brandon Shores retirement, BGE is increasing its profits with an investment of nearly $800 million in unbid transmission that could save customers tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars,” Lapp said. “In the meantime, while transmission is being built for the Brandon Shores retirement, customers will have to pay to keep the coal-fired plant running beyond the retirement date — again at an additional cost of more than $215 million per year.”

In response to the criticism, PJM’s Shields said the grid operator was not a party to the agreement to close the coal-fired plant, and renewables alone would not compensate for its eventual closure. “There needs to be significant investment in transmission to keep the lights on in much of Maryland,” he said.