By Adam Pagnucco.
Yesterday’s county council work session on Bill 13-22, known as “the electrocution bill,” featured a stark warning from BGE that should cause pause in all rational people. We shall see if it impacts the council.
First, a bit of background. Bill 13-22 would require most new buildings to avoid using natural gas and instead draw all their power from the electric grid. The bill’s original version would have included additions and major renovations but they have now been removed. The goal of the bill is to encourage the use of renewable energy instead of natural gas, but power from the electric grid is overwhelmingly fueled by coal, gas and nuclear with solar, wind and hydro accounting for a combined single digit percentage. No one knows what the bill will cost, but BGE estimated the cost of electrification on their service territory to be up to $50 billion while the National Association of Home Builders estimated that electrification could cause the price of new homes to rise by $4,000 to $14,000.
Montgomery County is not the only local jurisdiction considering building electrification. D.C. is advancing a similar measure but, according to a Bisnow report last month, its “plan to ban natural gas from most new commercial buildings was unexpectedly derailed last week after regional utility Pepco raised last-minute concerns about whether the grid could support the changes.”
Last spring, the General Assembly passed the Climate Solutions Now Act, a comprehensive measure dealing with greenhouse gas emission goals, energy efficiency, conservation, zero-emission vehicles in the state fleet and other issues. The bill was a heavy lift that was years in the making and its passage was celebrated by the state’s environmental community. It requires multiple studies, including one on the impact of building electrification on utility grids that is due in September of next year. Here is how the bill’s fiscal impact statement describes that study:
General System Planning Study: In uncodified language, the bill requires PSC [Public Service Commission] to complete a general system planning study, for gas and electric companies with total gross annual revenues equal to or greater than 3% of the total gross annual revenues of all public service companies in the State, to assess the capacity of each company’s gas and electric distribution systems to successfully serve customers under a managed transition to a highly electrified building sector. The study must meet several requirements. PSC is authorized to work with consultants and experts to complete the required study, and PSC may coordinate the study with other specified annual and interim reports required under the bill. Gas and electric public service companies must provide PSC and its consultants and experts information, as necessary, to complete the required study. PSC must report its findings to LPC [Legislative Policy Committee] by September 30, 2023.
So the General Assembly has decided to get more data on the impacts of building electrification and will then figure out how to proceed. It’s hard to argue with such an approach. But our county council seems uninterested in further data, especially on cost (since they don’t have any!) and is instead fast-tracking its bill to a lame duck vote. That prompted a warning from BGE Director of Governmental and External Affairs Charles Washington, which he delivered at yesterday’s council work session on the bill.
In response to a question from Council Member Sidney Katz about the bill’s timing and impact on the electric grid, Washington stated the following.
Council Member, that’s a good question. Under the current laws of Maryland, the utilities get our electricity from PJM, a regional grid operator. And what we see in the BGE service territory is if electrification were to move forward at a rapid pace, we would see up to triple the load requirements in our service territory. All of that would still come from PJM. Today, there’s a mix of fuels. Some renewable, some nuclear, some coal, natural gas, etcetera. In order for Maryland to reach its goals, we will need to clean that generation stack over time, but today, we do see a good deal of fossil fuels providing electricity in our area.
After responding to another question from Katz, Washington went on:
Our concern, our principal concern with this bill, is that it’s not informed by any studies of Montgomery County’s actual infrastructure. You will hear discussions of a study in D.C., people call it high level, you will hear discussions of a study in Massachusetts or New York, but there has not been a low level, medium level or high level study of what this will mean for the infrastructure of Montgomery County. And we think that’s really risky. So will we make the investments? Sure. But, you know, we did a study – BGE did – for our total service territory. And what we found in that study is that a bill like this multiplied across our entire jurisdiction would require 250 new or expanded substations. 250. We currently have 200 substations. So we’re talking about doubling them. The poles and wires that you see come up and down your streets, we call those feeders, that would need to double as well. We can build that infrastructure but it takes time. A substation only takes between 5 and 10 years. And so we want to do that work, we need to do that work, but here in Montgomery County, we don’t know how many substations will be necessary. We don’t know how many feeders will be necessary.
Under questioning from Council Member Will Jawando, Washington clarified that load requirements in BGE’s territory would triple if all existing buildings were electrified. Bill 13-22 applies to new construction, but as old buildings are torn down and new buildings are erected to replace them, its cumulative impact will expand over time – something that its supporters would like to see.
You can see Washington’s comments below.
Everyone who is sane understands that climate change is an existential issue but there is a strong contrast between how the General Assembly and the county council are dealing with it. The General Assembly has worked on the issue for many years and has put together a comprehensive approach embodied by the Climate Solutions Now Act of which potential building electrification is just one element. And as they proceed, they have mandated studies on cost, grid structure impact, transition employment and retraining, business transition to renewable energy, electricity storage, grid security and building codes, among other subjects. They are demonstrating an interest in striking a balance between combating climate change, affordability and logistical implementation and they are getting the data they need to make decisions.
The council, by contrast, is winging it. They have no data on their bill’s cost or its impact on the county’s electric grid. In their work session, they did not even bother to go through their 160-page packet in which their staff identified many issues for consideration, including the bill’s intersection with other laws and regulations, whether the electric grid can handle additional demand, cost, incentives for building owners and impacts on blue collar jobs. Witnessing the work session in real time, it was hard to believe that a majority of the council members truly understand their bill and all of the many issues it generates.
What happens now? Four departing council members – nearly half the council – are packing up their offices while their staff is about to head out the door. Thanksgiving will be next week. There is little time for amendments to be drafted or more input to be gathered. There is certainly no time to study additional data as the state is doing. And then the council will return on November 29 with a vote on one of the most complex and expensive county bills in recent memory tentatively scheduled.
Is this any way to run a government?