This week, Governor Wes Moore attributed surging electricity bills to grid operators, yet his own policies have amplified the challenge.
PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest grid operator, held its annual company gathering in Baltimore earlier this week. For Maryland’s Democratic governor, the event offered a platform to vent about climbing energy costs.
“I’m here to state plainly that PJM can and must do more for ratepayers,” Moore stated, adding that PJM’s system “isn’t functioning as it should.” His remarks come as Maryland’s residential electricity price has climbed to 22.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, a level that is 24 percent above the national average and 6.4 percent higher than last year.
Maryland isn’t the only state facing higher bills. Nationally, residential electricity prices rose by 7.4 percent from February 2025 to February 2026, the most recent period for which federal data are available. While data centers have been a convenient scapegoat for rising wholesale costs, a range of factors underlie these increases, including aging-grid upgrades, fluctuations in natural gas prices, supply-chain constraints, and demand that has outpaced supply.
As Jeffrey Shields, PJM’s senior manager of external communications, told Reason, the operator is “working with relentless focus to accelerate the connection of new generation.” He added that any issues PJM once faced with its interconnection process—criticized by Moore—are now a thing of the past, according to Shields.
Confronted with a backlog of new energy-generation and storage projects, PJM shut its interconnection queue in 2022 and restructured its process from first-come, first-served to what Shields describes as a “cluster” approach, leading to 811 new generation projects in the first cycle of the year.
While Moore has criticized PJM, he has consistently backed policies such as price caps and mandates for clean energy that distort markets and raise costs for Maryland residents. This includes two bills recently signed by the governor, which are framed as measures to “shield Maryland families from rising utility costs and make Maryland’s economy more business-friendly” but are likely to produce the opposite outcomes.
One of those measures, the Utility RELIEF Act, is said to save residents “at least $150 on their energy bills every year.” The law allocates $100 million for refunds or credits to ratepayers drawn from the state’s Strategic Energy Investment Fund (SEIF). An additional $100 million is earmarked for the Maryland Energy Administration to “conduct a competitive, low-bid auction” for renewable-energy projects.
Funded by “alternative compliance payments” from utilities, SEIF payments have grown from $77 million in fiscal year 2022 to $365 million by fiscal year 2025, according to the state’s energy administration.
Josh Smith, a senior fellow at the Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that actions such as those envisioned in the RELIEF Act “tend to push costs higher,” deterring suppliers from serving the market.
Another bill promoted by the Moore administration, the DECADE Act, is said to bolster Maryland’s ability to “attract, develop, and grow businesses” through a package of tax credits and carve-outs intended to offset the state’s 3 percent tech tax, which Moore signed into law last May. The legislation’s key elements—including economic development zones, film tax credits, job-creation credits, and research-and-development credits—appear to reflect a government that believes it can allocate capital more efficiently than the market.
Max Gulker, managing director of technology policy at the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit that publishes Reason, argues that Maryland’s challenges require the state to consider expanding existing infrastructure and building new grids.
That, of course, is easier said than done. The Piedmont Reliability Project, meant to boost the state’s transmission capacity, has faced regulatory and legal hurdles from the state since its 2024 announcement, according to local NBC affiliate WBALTV11. A decision by the state’s utility commission on the project’s viability isn’t expected before 2027.
Maryland has moved to streamline its interconnection-permit process to align with its clean-energy goals. Under the Next Generation Energy Act, eligible applicants can obtain permits within 295 days. To qualify, a project’s greenhouse gas emissions must be lower than those of coal or oil, and it must be capable of generating energy rapidly during peak demand.
Although this may seem like an obvious case of the government picking energy winners and losers, such policies are common. As Maryland Public Service Commission Chair Kumar Barve tells Reason, “All fifty states in the Union provide incentives for different kinds of energy… There isn’t a single free-market state in the union, not Texas, not Oklahoma, not anyone.”
And just as Maryland isn’t alone in tilting the scales toward renewables, Moore isn’t the only governor to fault PJM for price increases tied to these policies.
In New Jersey, a state long subsidizing renewables and, until recently, prohibiting nuclear-power construction, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill has halted utility-rate increases. “I’m going to crack down on PJM, connect new energy to the grid, and sue to prevent excessive rate hikes,” she pledged during last year’s campaign.
