BALTIMORE — In a pair of votes on Monday, the Maryland Senate advanced a Senate and House version of a sweeping Democrat-led energy package, moving lawmakers closer to a final deal aimed at lowering energy bills for Marylanders.

The Senate approved its version of the Utility RELIEF Act in a 38-4 vote, with support from eight Republicans, despite hours of contentious floor debate last week over the bill’s scope and approach. Senate Bill 841 includes three Republican-sponsored amendments.

“I do recognize that in this bill, there is an acknowledgment that we need to bring down costs for ratepayers,” House Minority Whip Justin Ready, who has consistently criticized the bill since its introduction in mid-March, told his colleagues ahead of his yes vote. “I believe at least a little bit of relief is better than nothing, but it should be more. It could be more … We want to see this Senate hold firm.”

In an identical but separate vote, senators with little deliberation also passed House Bill 1532, the House’s version, which doesn’t incorporate any GOP-led changes. Now, the two bills head for negotiations between the chambers in the final days of the 2026 session.

“It’s a very comprehensive piece of legislation that goes far beyond just providing short-term relief through a variety of program changes and adjustments to rate-making policies within the control of the General Assembly,” Sen. Brian Feldman, chair of the Education, Energy and Environment Committee, said. “There are a lot of very, very positive things in this bill, which is why the House version passed on a bipartisan vote, and it passed the Triple E Committee on a 9-1 bipartisan vote.”

Now, lawmakers must consider and pass both versions of the bill, with the Senate’s proposal heading to the House for consideration and the House version held for a conference committee to negotiate a final compromise before it reaches the governor’s desk.

The legislation, unveiled in mid-March, has been a central piece of Democratic leaders’ push to address rising electric costs that have strained household budgets statewide throughout the session. Democrats in both chambers have maintained that the plan would reduce costs over the next several years through grid upgrades, new power generation, stricter oversight of utilities and about $150 in annual rebates for ratepayers.

House and Senate bills diverge

Although the House and Senate bills were introduced as identical proposals, they have since diverged. One key difference involves how utilities set rates.

The House would ban “forecast test years,” which allow utilities to raise rates based on what they think they’ll spend in the future, rather than what they’ve already spent. The Senate, however, asks regulators to study the practice instead of eliminating it.

The Senate version also takes a different approach to environmental goals. It would restore EmPOWER Maryland, the state’s flagship energy-efficiency program, to its current greenhouse-gas reduction goals by 2030 — six years earlier than the House plan. It also requires residential programs to meet certain cost-effectiveness standards, language that the House removed.

The Senate also adopted several Republican-backed amendments last week.

One measure would overturn a recent decision by the Maryland Public Service Commission requiring new natural gas customers to pay the full cost of extending service lines. The amendment would again allow utilities to spread those costs across all ratepayers.

However, consumer and environmental advocates warn that it could increase costs for existing customers while encouraging continued investment in fossil-fuel infrastructure.

Emily Starr, a senior advisor with Maryland PIRG, told The Baltimore Sun on Monday that the commission’s original policy was expected to save customers money by ending what she described as a system that benefits utilities. “The utilities profit off of this in a big way,” she said. “They can make up to $3 for every dollar they spend on new gas lines, and it can really drive up customers’ bills.”

State regulators estimated the change could save customers about $150 million a year and roughly $1 billion over the next decade, Starr said. The Senate’s decision to intervene, she added, “is something we think is going to hurt gas customers.”

Sen. Paul Corderman, who introduced the amendment, said it was needed to avoid slowing housing development, particularly in Western Maryland. But Starr said the claim is misleading, noting the policy has not been finalized and would not ban new gas hookups — only change how they are paid for.

“Nothing is requiring a housing development to have gas. It encourages them to have gas, but a housing development is actually cheaper to build if it’s all electric,” she said. “This idea that a housing development can’t be put in place doesn’t make sense. It might be more expensive for that developer to build a housing development with gas.”

Other amendments would expand notice requirements for landowners near proposed power lines and scale back a House-backed proposal limiting how utilities can use ratepayer money for certain employee salaries.

Both chambers also included provisions addressing the growing energy demands of large users such as data centers. The Senate added incentives for facilities that invest in clean energy, including benefits tied to energy storage, purchasing clean power, and reducing energy use during peak demand.

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