Top Maryland Democrats passed legislation Monday to offer consumers swift, albeit limited, relief on soaring energy bills, finalizing a sweeping legislative package hours before the legislative session’s close.

Senate President Bill Ferguson and Speaker of the House Joseline Peña-Melnyk stood with Gov. Wes Moore on Monday for a news conference laying out their agreement, which they say will save Marylanders at least $150 a year — or about $12.50 a month — on energy bills in the short-term. Those savings come via a temporary rollback to an energy efficiency surcharge on customer bills.

“We have spent these past weeks staying laser focused on making life just a little bit more affordable for the people of Maryland, because we’re all very clear of the complete onslaught that we’re enduring here,” Moore said.

The Democrats who dominate the General Assembly spent the session telegraphing their plan for what has become a dominant issue, but agreement on the details proved more challenging than they suggested when they first announced the bill, dubbed the Utility RELIEF Act, a month ago.

The package got final approval in both chambers hours after the Monday morning’s news. The final version strips out or tempers several Senate amendments critics viewed as friendly to the utility industry.

At over 100 pages long, the bill is a grab-bag of energy priorities, and top Democrats point to other measures they expect will drive bigger savings for many ratepayers. Among them, the package earmarks state investments in solar arrays and battery storage, establishes heightened regulatory constraints on utilities and controversial new transmission lines and attempts to curb the stress of data centers on the power grid.

“I really believe that this bill that we have in front of us, it is the crowning achievement of this legislative session, it truly is,” Peña-Melnyk said.

A $150 cut to bills

Many Marylanders watched their monthly bills rocket into the hundreds of dollars a month this winter, and, with reelection contests just months away, addressing widespread concern over energy prices became a top priority for lawmakers this session.

Legislative leaders acknowledged the modest nature of immediate savings but said they believed they had done all they could given the limited power of the state compared to federal authorities.

“The unfortunate truth is that Maryland has only so many tools at its disposal to lower bills and prevent future increases,” Ferguson said.

The bulk of these short-term savings come from a temporary rollback to surcharges on utility bills, which for almost two decades have financed the energy efficiency program EmPOWER Maryland to fund improvements like home weatherization and efficient appliances.

The program has become a favorite of ratepayer and environmental advocates because of its long-term cost and climate benefits, and while lawmakers have pointed to immediate relief under the EmPOWER curtailments, critics of the idea argue that customers will pay in the long run.

The deepest cuts to EmPOWER would take place over the next three years before efficiency standards would steadily build back to full strength in 2036.

The bill also puts $100 million from a state clean energy fund as a downpayment on EmPOWER surcharge, further easing the burden on ratepayers.

Top Democrats argue that other measures in the bill will yield even greater savings. Among them, the legislation ends a fee utilities have been able to charge ratepayers for participating in the regional electrical grid, an antiquated incentive that the governor’s office estimates costs Marylanders $20 million a year.

Savings for low-income Marylanders, meanwhile, could be greater thanks to funding for a new energy assistance program, which Ferguson said could cut up to $1,400 in energy costs for some eligible households.

David Lapp, a state-appointed ratepayer advocate with the Maryland Office of the People’s Counsel, praised many of these measures, including a change that would end the EmPOWER surcharge for gas utility customers.

While the final bill didn’t take some steps backed by ratepayer advocates to curb utility spending, Lapp said in a statement, it creates important regulatory and transparency tools “that should help lower costs and reduce the upward pressure on skyrocketing utility rates that are driving an energy affordability crisis in Maryland.”

Curbing data centers and boosting renewables

Powered by the demands of artificial intelligence, the booming data center industry has added new strain to the mid-Atlantic power grid. The region’s grid operator has warned of the potential for blackouts and projected that these computer warehouses and other users could add 67 gigawatts of new peak demand across the mid-Atlantic and Appalachia in the next decade — roughly the output of 35 Hoover Dams.

Changes applied by the Senate would add new guardrails around data centers coming to Maryland, including a tariff that would force developers of large centers to pay for any upgrades they require of the transmission system.

“Maryland is at the national forefront of data center policy,” Ferguson said.

The bill also offers faster permitting for data centers that supply their own clean energy and establishes a registry under the Public Service Commission for new data centers — a step meant to give officials a more realistic picture of growing demand as legitimate and speculative developers both eye the state.

Meanwhile, state leaders have pushed to boost Maryland’s energy output, and the Utility RELIEF Act takes steps to expand the supply of solar arrays and battery storage. One of those provisions would take $100 million from the state’s clean energy fund to finance new solar arrays and battery storage in the next year.

It also cuts red tape for residential solar panels, a proposal backers hope will improve a sluggish permitting process for rooftop arrays while helping to cut household energy costs.

Regulating utilities

A handful of changes approved by Senate lawmakers were removed or tempered in negotiations with House leaders in recent days.

Most consequential may be the legislature’s efforts to rein in utilities’ ability to use forecasted spending to propose new rates, a practice the Office of the People’s Counsel says has accelerated rate increases for Baltimore Gas and Electric and Potomac Electric Power Co. customers.

House lawmakers had pushed to bar this practice completely, while the Senate proposed keeping it in place while studying the impacts. The two chambers met somewhere in the middle, opting to bar forecasted ratemaking for one pilot year to assess longer-term impacts.

Lawmakers also scrapped a controversial amendment, adopted this month on the Senate floor, that would have blocked a new Public Service Commission rule to prohibit utilities from spreading out the costs of new gas lines, a policy the Office of the People’s Counsel predicted would cost ratepayers nearly $1 billion in the next decade.

Another provision would bar utilities from using ratepayer money to underwrite executive salaries.

Lawmakers also looked to further control the construction of transmission lines, which have sparked intense backlash from rural northern Maryland to South Baltimore.

The legislation encourages utilities to upgrade lines and to confine new ones to existing rights-of-way. It also subjects underground lines, like the one Baltimore Gas and Electric hopes to build to Baltimore Peninsula, to Public Service Commission oversight.

Exelon, the energy conglomerate that owns BGE and Potomac Electric Power Co., or Pepco, issued a statement warning of future complications as a result of those provisions.

“Policies that limit how utilities plan, invest, and recover costs can make it more challenging to maintain the safe, reliable energy system that customers depend on every day and may ultimately increase costs or delay critical infrastructure investments,” the statement read in part.