A January op-ed in The Baltimore Sun asked the question, “Is Maryland going to see rolling blackouts or high electricity prices?” Your June electricity bill provides the answer. It is the higher electricity prices.

PJM, the regional grid operator, has the charter to deliver reliable electricity at the lowest cost for 13 states. It is now clear that PJM also has the tools to keep the lights on, at least for the moment. The PJM market increased the capacity price by a factor of eight. The natural gas plants that put themselves on the decommissioning list un-retired and took themselves off the list. Money talks, BGE ratepayers get the bill.

What’s fueling this crisis is Maryland’s own carbon tax, disguised under a sound idea, but badly implemented: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The tax increases operating costs for in-state fossil fuel generators so that they simply can’t compete with cheaper, out-of-state imported electricity. So, Maryland plants pack up and leave.

There are solutions, like a tariff on imported electricity. But we are not going to find a solution if we continue to deny that there is a problem. State officials tell us that these power plants are closing for “economic reasons,” which is true — if you count getting taxed into oblivion as economics. And there is a white paper concluding that PJM RGGI states are increasing, not decreasing, regional emissions.

Don’t worry though, our leaders have a plan. Enter the Ratepayer Protection Act of 2025, which authorizes the Strategic Energy Investment Fund to give you a little refund, labeled the “Legislative Energy Hardship Credit.” This handout helps ratepayers to pay an extra $200 million a year in capacity payments to fossil fuel plants, so they can, in turn, afford to pay the $200 million RGGI tax. See what they did there? It’s a neat little political money-laundering loop: You pay more, so the power plants can pay more RGGI tax, so you can be reimbursed, so you can pay more. Problem solved — if the problem was making accountants dizzy.

But lo! Beware of what you can’t see! How much does Maryland pay for offshore wind (OSW)?

The POWER Act of 2023 sets a Maryland goal to install 8.5 GW of offshore wind by 2031. The Public Service Commission has a plan and is awarding Offshore Renewable Energy Credits (ORECs) to contractors. Maryland guarantees the OREC price for any electricity produced by offshore wind for 20 years. Rather than trouble ratepayers with higher electricity bills, the POWER Act allocates OREC subsidies to the General Fund, the tax base, where it competes with roads and schools. The cost is hidden.

Maryland guarantees to pay the OREC price for any OSW-produced electricity. That electricity generates revenue through sales to PJM. So, how much money is involved? The total subsidy is the difference between the OREC award price and the PJM market price. In 2023, the average PJM market clearing price was $35/MWh. The Maryland OSW-2 OREC rebid awards for phase three and four was $122/MWh. So, if Maryland really builds 8,500 MW of OSW with a capacity factor of 43%, these numbers multiply out to a total Maryland liability of $2.8 billion per year, for 20 years. (Shhhhh, don’t tell the bond rating agencies.) To be fair, some of this subsidy might be covered by a 30% federal Investment Tax Credit, assuming the Trump administration fails to cancel the credits.

On the plus side, the 2025 legislature passed the Energy Resource Adequacy and Planning Act for the purpose of establishing a Strategic Energy Planning Office (SEPO). The idea behind SEPO was to employ some high-cost technocrats, people who do not care what the answer is but have real development skills, to clarify risk, strategy and options. Mayland is in trouble because big commitments have been and are being made based on political advocacy and passionate aspirations rather than competent analysis and rational choice. RGGI, a carbon tax, is supposed to work by increasing wholesale prices so that more expensive clean generation can compete with natural gas. Instead, PJM RGGI is bankrupting natural gas plants without replacing baseload capacity. Why? And Maryland keeps telling everyone that RGGI is working just fine.

Gov. Wes Moore vetoed the SEPO bill claiming that the bill is unnecessary, duplicative and expensive ($5 million per year). Really? Look at your electric bill. Do you think Maryland has climate policy under control? Your electricity bill is relentlessly increasing because policy organizations are trying to execute an engineering task. The goals, the skills, the priorities and culture are all wrong. When the governor talks about optimizing current agency functions and resources, he is missing the point. Maryland needs an independent second opinion. SEPO was an inspired spark of competence in an otherwise overwhelmed government. Beware of what happens next. This will get worse.

Alex Pavlak is a professional engineer, Severna Park resident and the chair of the Future of Energy Initiative, whose mission is to facilitate the development of sustainable, affordable clean energy systems.