As Maryland politicians vie for reelection this year, they have perhaps no higher priority than convincing the public they’ve done everything in their power to bring down soaring energy prices.

That was the idea when Gov. Wes Moore and leading Democratic lawmakers unveiled a sprawling plan last month to save Marylanders at least $150 a year on energy bills.

Their legislation, called the Utility RELIEF Act, was the product of weeks of deliberation and difficult compromise, House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk said at the March news conference.

But as the legislative session nears its end on April 13, the final outcome is in question, and top Democrats remain at odds.

Meanwhile, ratepayer and climate advocates who had made an uneasy peace with the bill now express frustration with the version approved by the Senate. Senate lawmakers voted 38-4 in favor of their bill Monday, setting up a fight between the chambers in the session’s final days.

A spokesperson for Peña-Melnyk said the speaker believes the House version offers stronger protections for ratepayers.

Senate President Bill Ferguson, meanwhile, fired back at arguments that his chamber’s changes boost the utility industry. He said the Senate remains focused on lowering bills but also argued that lawmakers must balance concerns about affordability and growing strains on the regional power grid.

“I know it’s easy these days to throw punches for political purposes,” Ferguson said. “This is too serious and too important. We have to do the right thing for ratepayers and in the best interest of Maryland’s long-term growth opportunities.”

Among the biggest points of contention are several Senate amendments that critics see as friendly to utility companies. At over 100 pages long, the bill is a grab bag of energy policies that aims to put guardrails on energy-sucking data centers, set new regulations for controversial power lines, and encourage development of solar power and batteries.

The $150 savings outlined by lawmakers would come from temporary cuts to a nearly two-decade-old energy efficiency program, known as EmPOWER Maryland, that applies a surcharge on utility bills to finance things like appliance upgrades and home weatherization, which help ease stress on the grid.

Emily Scarr, a ratepayer advocate with the group Maryland Public Interest Research Group, was critical of the EmPOWER cuts when the bill was first proposed but liked efforts to curb utility spending, like one that would bar utilities from relying on forecasts of future spending to set new rates — a practice the Office of the People’s Counsel and other critics say has accelerated rate hikes for Baltimore Gas and Electric and Potomac Electric Power Company customers.

After the Senate’s changes, Scarr argues that the bill does far less to protect ratepayers.

The Senate stripped out that prohibition on forecast ratemaking — and adds an incentive for utilities that spend less than expected, meaning customers pay whether utilities overspend or not.

A proposal to bar utilities from underwriting executive salaries with ratepayer money was watered down in the Senate, despite projections of the policy’s already modest savings: 80 cents a month.

And in a floor amendment Thursday, the Senate adopted a provision that blocks a Public Service Commission rule to prohibit utilities from spreading costs of new gas lines across their customer base, a policy the Maryland Office of the People’s Counsel predicts will cost ratepayers nearly $1 billion in the next decade.

The deepest cuts to EmPOWER would happen over the next three years before returning to full strength by 2036.

State leaders insist that these temporary EmPOWER cuts will save some Marylanders hundreds a year, but defenders of the program — including ratepayer advocates and home contractors — say that customers lose in the long run.

Anna Johnson, a policy researcher for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Future, said Marylanders would see immediate relief through a reduction to the surcharge. But scaled-back investments in energy efficiency effectively add new demand to the power grid and exacerbate energy prices over the longer term, she said, costing Maryland ratepayers an estimated $592 million over about 10 years.

Josh Tulkin, director of the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club, also finds plans to gut energy efficiency frustrating and said he’s just hoping to minimize damage to the program.

The Sierra Club director likes some Senate additions, like steps to encourage renewable energy and streamline rooftop solar permitting, but when it comes to the EmPOWER cuts, he said lawmakers seem set on a quick fix.

“I’ve talked to some people who say, ‘I hear you,’” Tulkin recounted, “‘but what are we supposed to do? Do nothing?’”

Democrats hold overwhelming majorities in both Maryland chambers, but in crafting the latest version of the Utility RELIEF Act, Republicans have had a hand.

Republicans introduced several amendments adopted by the Senate and have long pushed to end EmPOWER, making this year’s bill a bit of an “I told you so moment” in the view of Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey.

The Eastern Shore Republican and his caucus blame Maryland’s pro-renewable policies for driving up costs, and he said he’s seen a divide among Democratic colleagues who prioritize green policies and those who prioritize cutting costs.

Unlike some in his caucus, Hershey remains opposed to the bill, a position he feels he can justify to constituents despite the legislation’s projected savings.

“Rather than just saying, ‘Hey, I did something,’” he said, “I can tell you the reasons why we should have gone further, but we didn’t.”

Senate President Bill Ferguson rejected the notion that Republicans have played an outsized role in shaping the energy plan this year. Several Republican amendments — including one to end EmPOWER completely — failed, the Baltimore Democrat pointed out.

In a news conference Tuesday, the Senate president also emphasized steps his chamber took to develop new guardrails around data centers, including requiring large data centers to pay for upgrades to the regional transmission system. Data centers that bring their own clean energy could also get permitted faster.

Scarr, though, hopes lawmakers will reconsider many of the Senate’s changes.

In his Tuesday news conference, Ferguson said he was caught off guard by the criticisms and defended the Senate’s changes.

It may be tempting to assume that utilities always operate in the worst interest of ratepayers, Ferguson said, but that’s why Maryland has regulators.

“If we want to continue to grow in Maryland, if we want to make sure that we still have economic development, if we want to lower costs with housing,” he said, “we can’t destroy marketplaces on the basis of a desired political outcome.”

The Banner’s Brenda Wintrode and Pamela Wood contributed reporting.