The many bills introduced on climate and energy and all the changes made to them had everyone on a roller-coaster. In mid-session, leaders of the House and Senate introduced a set of bills known as the leadership energy package. These bills would have encouraged building new methane gas plants, purportedly based on projections of future energy needs in Maryland. But, thanks to key legislators and many climate activists, including Third Act Maryland, the bills were amended to include important reforms of existing programs and additional requirements for improving the electric grid. The final bill was passed as the Next Generation Energy Act (follow the HB or SB links below for the full name). To learn more about this bill and other important advances, see their summaries below.

RENEW Act Study Bill (HB0128/SB0149) | Passed

This important bill would have Maryland join Vermont and New York in requiring fossil fuel polluters to pay for the damages their work and product has caused to the State. The original bill included a two year study period, followed by implementation of a payment system devised during the study phase. The final bill that passed kept only the study phase. This is a step in the right direction but will need more work to actually drive implementation.

Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy Act (HB0398/SB0316) | Not passed, but…

The battery storage provision for up to 1,750 megawatts from this bill was added to the Leadership Energy package (see Next Generation Energy Act below). Such large-scale battery storage is the fastest and most cost effective way to meet our short-term reliability needs and our long-term clean energy goals. It will be built with “high road” labor standards: good green jobs for a green economy.

Energy Resource Adequacy and Planning Act (HB1037/SB0909) | Passed

Creates an independent Strategic Energy Planning Office for long term energy planning in Maryland. Establishes a framework for comprehensive energy planning that considers reliability, affordability, and environmental impacts.

Next Generation Energy Act (HB1035/SB0937) | Passed

This bill began as the Leadership Energy package and was amended to include key components of other legislation. The final bill included (1) battery storage procurement of up to 1,750 megawatts, to be built with “high road” labor standards: good green jobs for a green economy (Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy Act);  (2) significant reforms to utility rate-setting, including tightening requirements for multi-year rate plans and the STRIDE program (Ratepayer Protection Act);  (3) removal of trash incineration from the renewable portfolio standard  (Reclaim Renewable Energy Act of 2025);  (4) establishment of a rate structure by the Public Service Commission to protect individual ratepayers from the electric system costs of data centers and other large users;  (5) savings for ratepayers by directing utilities to use in-house workers rather than more costly contractors; (6) procurement model for new nuclear energy.

Renewable Energy Certainty Act (HB1036/SB0931) – passed

Compromise between urgency of full deployment of clean energy and importance of protecting farmland in the state: (1) standardizes siting requirements for large scale solar and battery storage projects across the state, (2) requires rooftop solar companies to follow best practices to protect customers from bad actors, (3) requires state to identify state-owned land suitable for solar energy development. Codifies language that keeps solar development confined to 5 percent of priority preservation areas; allows counties to create tougher regulations for large solar after that threshold is met; fast-tracks the Distributed Generation Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity process for some solar projects.

Building a new gas plant in Maryland is a really bad idea. It’s bad for ratepayers, bad for the climate, and bad for public health.

Yet on February 3rd, Maryland’s top lawmakers stood before the public at a press conference in Annapolis and announced a controversial and risky plan to try to lower power bills and relieve grid congestion by…building…a…gas…plant!

So controversial is this idea that the legislators did all they could to avoid even saying the word “gas” throughout the 28-minute press conference. Yet legislative language released two days later by Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) – the so-called “Next Generation Energy Act” — paves the way for a whopping three gigawatts of new gas combustion in the state. The bill fast tracks electricity-plant construction equal to all existing coal and oil plant capacity in the state today, capacity that is likely to be retired soon due to the failing economics of these dirty plants. 

Top environmental groups in the state – including Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network – were quick to oppose any plan to replace those plants with new gas, saying cheaper, cleaner, and faster-build alternatives exist. And they are right.

Some good energy bills were also announced at the same February 3rd press conference. A bill to cut red tape in the deployment of solar power and batteries in the state is an excellent idea from Senator Brian Feldman (D-Mont) and Delegate CT Wilson (D-Charles). And a bill to improve energy planning in the state is badly needed from Senator Katie Hester (D-Howard) and Delegate Brian Crosby (D-Calvert).  

But the Ferguson-Jones bill opening the door to a gas plant is the opposite of what Marylanders need right now. Let us count the ways. 

Gas is BAD for ratepayers. 

Think your power bill is too high now? Just wait till you start paying for a multi-billion-dollar gas plant or plants near Baltimore that are much more expensive than alternatives. That construction of up to 3,109 megawatts of power from gas – which the Ferguson-Jones bill invites — would likely cost close to $4 billion dollars. If every Marylander shared that cost equally, it would run a family of four about $2,580. 

But President Ferguson has already hinted that the expense could be much higher. Surely knowing how controversial a new fossil fuel plant will be to voters when sea-level rise is already harming downtown Annapolis and extreme weather is disrupting cities and farms everywhere, he said the proposed plant could be “converted” to a carbon capture and storage facility “when that (technology) is available.“

Well that technology is available now for gas plants but no U.S. state has used it because it’s fantastically expensive – and will likely remain so. You have to capture the carbon dioxide after combustion, pressurize the CO2 into a pipeline, and finally inject it into a subterranean cavern guaranteed never to leak. That would add nearly $350 million per year to the gas plant operation, drenching ratepayers with even more costs. 

And, by the way, the nearest possible place to plausibly inject compressed carbon is in far western Maryland – so a pipeline would need to be built out there.

Even without carbon capture, a prominent study commissioned by Google and conducted by the respected research firm Brattle shows building a gas plant today is significantly more expensive than deploying utility-scale batteries (as Texas and California have done to address electricity load growth and grid stability) or investing in energy efficiency and “smart grid” technology. Without a doubt, these alternatives could be deployed to solve Maryland’s in-state generation problem faster and at a lower cost. A bill this year from Delegate Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery) – called the Abundant and Affordable Clean Energy Act (HB 398/SB 316)– would do just that. 

Ferguson and Jones are suggesting the opposite, implying that gas is the best option. But no one – not the legislators, not the gas companies who stand to profit millions, no one – has presented to the public any independent data or modeling that  shows gas beats out alternatives on cost. Where are the numbers? Are lawmakers going to vote without looking at any comparison or independent data? And how about the January announcement of new AI technology showing data centers may need only one-tenth of the energy surge that utilities point to as a big justification for more power plants? Will new gas plants in Maryland end up largely standing idle at a huge cost to ratepayers?

Gas is BAD for the climate.

Make no mistake, despite good strides on clean energy in the past, authorizing construction of a massive three gigawatt gas plant in the 2020s, in a world of rapid global warming, will be THE climate legacy of this General Assembly — forever. And if Governor Wes Moore signs it, despite his personal strong support for offshore wind and solar in the state, the gas plant will be an indelible stain on his record for future state and national voters to remember. The tragedy is that the General Assembly, which has done as much as any statehouse to pass climate bills like the Clean Energy Jobs Act and the Climate Solutions Now Act, has helped lower the cost of solar and efficiency and battery technology, making them CHEAPER alternatives to the gas plant they’re being asked to vote for now.

How, exactly, does a gas plant fit into the state’s statutory goal of being carbon neutral by 2045? It doesn’t. Unless, of course, it’s equipped with the carbon capture and storage technology which, again, is still largely untested and wildly expensive and thus makes the present clean-energy options even cheaper as alternatives. 

And all talk of gas as “better” for the climate is largely untrue. Scores of studies have shown that when you combine the methane leakage from the drilling process – through violent fracking in neighboring states – then add leakage in pipelines on the way to the final combustion plant, the greenhouse gas “lifecycle” total is nearly as bad or worse than coal.

Gas is BAD for public health

Beyond injury to the climate, gas-burning power plants harm human health. They emit air pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are linked to respiratory problems, asthma, heart disease, and can particularly affect vulnerable populations like children and the elderly living nearby, leading to increased rates of lung and heart issues due to exposure to poor air quality. 

Using the former Biden Administration’s “social cost of carbon” calculation, a three-megawatt gas plant operating just 15-20 percent of the time as a so-called peaker plant (1500 hours per year), would add an additional $425 million dollars per year in social and environmental harm. Plus, fossil fuel plants are disproportionately located near communities of color, compounding issues of justice.

Time for real solutions, not gas

Fundamentally, the gas plant proposal is bad public policy.  Maryland legislators are ignoring abundant information that shows that clean energy, battery storage and energy efficiency solutions are available, cost less and are healthier for consumers and ratepayers than fossil fuel options.  The cleaner solutions do, though, take money away from entrenched, politically powerful interests – most notably utilities.  If lawmakers are serious about lowering electricity bills and helping Maryland ratepayers, they would abandon talk of building a harmful multi-billion-dollar gas plant and instead pass the alternative bills noted above, especially the Abundant and Affordable Clean Energy Act. And reforming the boondoggle STRIDE Program, where Maryland gas companies saddle  consumers with unnecessary underground pipe build outs, would save tens of billions of dollars for ratepayers.  

The bottom line: Gas is bad for everyone. Pursuing clean-energy alternatives saves money, lives, and our environment. Lawmakers need to start paying attention to what’s good for their constituents.  They should vote no on any new gas plant in Maryland.

(Christine Pendzich is a member of the Steering Committee of 350 Montgomery County and Bob Muehlenkamp is a volunteer with Third Act Maryland. Both groups are committed to fighting climate change with clean energy.)

A lifelong Marylander, Alsobrooks was born and raised in Prince George’s County. In 2018, she was elected Prince George’s County Executive, the first woman to hold the position and the first Black woman elected to the office of County Executive in Maryland history. She has focused on creating jobs and growing economic opportunity; investing in education and breaking ground on 10 new schools; expanding access to health care, mental health services, and addiction treatment; conducting youth outreach; and making sure people are safe.

If former Gov. Hogan is elected, however, the GOP could very well take control of the Senate, putting the Democrats’ pro-environment, pro-choice, and pro-voting rights agenda out of reach, even if Vice President Harris wins the election. Trump knows this, and that’s why he endorsed Hogan, who has been one of Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics. Should Trump win the presidency, he’ll need a GOP majority in the Senate to advance his pro-fossil fuel, anti-choice, and anti-democracy agenda. By electing Angela Alsobrooks, Marylanders can help Democrats retain a majority in the Senate.

The 65-year old resident of Upper Marlboro was born in Dayton, Ohio, to a military family, and grew up in various parts of the U.S. and abroad, including California, Germany, and Springfield, Virginia. Though her family was Catholic, as an adult she found that the Episcopal Church suited her better.

With a mother who became extremely anxious about thunderstorms and snowstorms, Donna was drawn to study meteorology at the University of Virginia. After college she joined the Air Force, met her husband in Arkansas, spent time in Guam, and then completed a master’s degree in meteorology, sponsored by the Air Force, at the University of Maryland. 

The Air Force assigned Donna the meteorology subspecialty of atmospheric chemistry for her degree; at the time, the world was focused on understanding how chlorofluorocarbons (used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol cans) were destroying the ozone layer. She said, “During the 1980s, ozone depletion and its causes brought concern and action across the world, culminating in the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which phased out these dangerous chemicals.” 

Industry tried to fight this change and there was partisan pushback, but the world came together to ban the harmful chemicals, and President Reagan signed the treaty. Donna contrasts the way nations came together to ban chlorofluorocarbons with the difficulty in getting nations to take meaningful action to deal with the climate emergency. (The Climate Solutions podcast Audiomentary: Ozone: How to Solve an Environmental Crisis ties the ozone crisis to the current climate crisis, offering lessons learned.)

After completing 10 years with the Air Force in 1991, Donna worked as a contractor at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, as a scientific programmer in the division studying ozone.

In 1996, Donna went on to work as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) in Suitland, as a programmer. In 2001, she became a federal employee with NESDIS, overseeing operational product generation from environmental satellites. Donna worked on fire and other land surface products, as well as products that monitored the earth’s ozone layer. In 2011, she began leading a team that distributes data and products from environmental satellites to national and state government agencies and commercial weather information companies as well as international weather forecasting organizations.

In January of this year, Donna went into semiretirement, reducing her hours by half, which has given her more time to volunteer with Third Act on democracy and climate efforts.

For many decades, Donna focused on individual actions like recycling and conservation to try to solve the problem of climate change. When she learned that fossil fuel companies promoted the concept of individual carbon footprint to divert attention away from their responsibilities, Donna became more motivated to take part in communal actions to hold those responsible for climate change accountable. (For more on Big Oil’s deceptive practices, see this University of California-Davis blog post, Big Oil Distracts from Their Carbon Footprint by Tricking You to Focus on Yours.)

Donna is proud of her three children, who all have careers that serve the public and who are climate supporters, and she’s grateful for her very supportive husband. In her spare time, Donna loves to visit and hike through nature’s beauty. Her favorite Third Act slogan is “No Time To Waste,” as we are in such a critical phase to stop fossil fuel extraction to save our beautiful, nurturing planet.

In the late 60s and early 70s, the women’s liberation movement clarion call, “the personal is political,” propelled many into activism. It fortified my teenage friends and me as we cut our activist teeth on anti-war demonstrations, civil rights campaigns, the environmental movement, women’s and gay liberation protests, and other causes that excited moral, ethical, and philosophical outrage. We embraced an unflinching belief that our actions would bring about a better world. Taking to the streets in the nation’s capital was our social life; we had absolute self-assuredness of our convictions and our actions, and could talk endlessly about politics, philosophy, and, of course, not trusting anyone over 30. Yes, the personal was political, but the political was also personal.

Over the ensuing decades, I never wavered from my political convictions. But a demanding career, raising a child, and caring for aging parents superseded any real activism. I expressed political outrage to anyone who would listen and showed up for my share of marches and demonstrations (if they were on the weekend). As undeniable evidence of the climate emergency and threats to basic rights and our system of government grew at an alarming pace, I knew it was time for me to take to the streets again. I decided to retire so I’d have time to devote to activism.

I thought I would dive into activism as soon as I stopped working, but I didn’t anticipate the difficulty I would have navigating retirement. Suddenly I had time to do what I had been yearning to do for years. But the loss of comradery and confidence I derived from my professional life has been disorienting. I have not been able to effortlessly take up where I left off. I don’t have the self-assuredness and energy of my youth. I feel like I’m starting from scratch.

Third Act seemed like an obvious place to start my journey back to activism—joining with like-minded, intelligent, thoughtful people working on the world’s most urgent crises. Initially, “like-minded” and good work got me to the door, but it has taken more to get this introvert into the room. To participate in Third Act’s nonviolent direct actions requires learning about the development, skills, strategies, and risks of specific actions. The prospect of putting your body on the line also means developing trust among everyone in our movement. That’s a tall order for a bunch of strangers.

The Mobilization for Climate & Democracy, held on June 6, was a meaningful event. Rebecca Mazur describes the activities of the Mobilization in more depth in her June 16 blog post . The stated intention of the day-long program is in its title: mobilization. The Mobilization was successful on that front, providing information needed to organize upcoming actions. It also fostered the development of community, the human connections so important to sustaining action. The programming provided depth and breadth and a rhythm that gave space to enter and to engage. The well-organized and well-executed structure included full-group information sessions (the why and the what of being there), small breakout sessions (hands on, personal, and practical), inspirational speakers (much needed motivational reinforcements), singalongs (embodied expressions of collective convictions), and food (plain old nonmetaphorical nourishment). It provided not only information but opportunities for growth, enrichment, and fortification for a group of otherwise unconnected folks—the extroverts and the introverts, the experienced and the inexperienced in political activism, the established and the newbies in Third Act, and the confident and the floundering. Making space for individuals builds community. For some, being part of the community may mean dipping in a toe, and for others it may mean taking a plunge. (For me, sharing my personal reflections here feels like both a toe-dip into an activity and a plunge into trust.)

Listening to Third Actors talk, it seems that some in this community made an effortless transition from professions to activism. I trust, however, that I am not the only one who is taking longer with transitions. Having aged out of the youth-fueled notion that anyone over 30 was corrupt and inept, there is great satisfaction in being among those aged at least 30 x 2 who bring experience, skills, wisdom, and tremendous doses of kindness. Thank you to those who organized the Mobilization in a way that acknowledged the multiple ways individuals may find themselves becoming part of a community and to focus that community to mobilize and address the most imminent and critical issues for our future.

And though her birthplace was protected from commercial development in 2013 when President Barack Obama created the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument, much of the site may be swallowed by the bay’s rising waters driven by climate change.

The climate threat comes as the nation prepares to celebrate Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday to commemorate the first step in the ending of slavery. Although Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free the enslaved in the Southern states of the Confederacy in September 1862, to go into effect on January 1, 1863, the news did not spread throughout the south until Union troops reached the remote areas. The last area to hear about the proclamation was Galveston Island in Texas on June 19, 1865. 

As a child, Tubman was sent to work for a local planter and became familiar with the local marshes while checking muskrat traps. As she grew older, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, hauling logs. 

In 1849, she escaped, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line to Philadelphia. Later, reflecting on her great relief she wrote: “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” But saving herself was not enough for Tubman. She returned over and over between 1851 and 1862 to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, making more than a dozen trips to lead relatives and friends to freedom. 

During the Civil War she worked for the Union Army as a cook and nurse initially. She considered Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a positive but incomplete step to free all people from slavery, so she began to work more directly to defeat the Confederacy. She served as an armed scout and spy and is credited with leading an armed expedition that liberated more than 700 enslaved people. Until several months after the Confederacy’s surrender in April 1865, Tubman worked for the Union forces. 

President Obama designated 25,000 acres on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to create the national monument. The designation highlights  many of the sites that were significant to Tubman’s life, including natural areas where she honed the skills that helped her become the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad.  While the Visitor’s Center itself was built on higher ground, much of the otherwise protected land is at risk due to climate change.

Sea levels in the Chesapeake Bay surrounding the site are rising at almost twice the global rate due to climate change and the site risks being largely underwater by 2050, according to a 2021 report by Climate Central. The waters near the memorial have already risen more than 10 inches in the last 70 years and are estimated to rise 15 inches more by 2050. The loss of shoreline also puts the area much more at risk for damage from hurricanes and their associated storm surges.

In addition to being the location of these vital historical venues, this area of the Eastern Shore is home to one of the largest populations on the Atlantic Coast of another national icon: nesting bald eagles. 

Maryland Matters, a non-profit news website, reported on the threat to the Tubman site and other historically significant locations on the bay in 2021.

Third Act Maryland is working hard to spread the word about the devastating effects of catastrophic global heating and to encourage our local, state and national leaders to enact policies to mitigate these effects and reduce their causes. As we commemorate Juneteenth this year, we encourage all to join these efforts. We take inspiration from stories of Harriet Tubman who worked tirelessly her entire life to fight for what she knew was right. In her memory, we must protect not just our vital history, but our natural areas and ensure a better future for everyone.

Coming to the United States from Taiwan at age nine, Bill grew up in the diverse neighborhood of Bronx, N.Y. His parents had left China for Taiwan just before the Communist takeover in 1949. His father, a civil engineer, worked in Taiwan for a few years before coming to the U.S. to work and attend graduate school. In 1961, Bill and his family also immigrated to the U.S., after navigating through the immigration policy that at the time set national quotas for certain countries. Living in the multi-ethnic Bronx largely spared Bill from overt discrimination, though he remembers being barred from staying at a motel with his family on a trip through New England in the 1960s.

Lure of science

Bill was always drawn to science. He attended the Bronx High School of Science, and studied Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Cornell University. With his interests in photography and geology, he decided to continue at Cornell, which was a pioneer in the new research area of remote sensing, for his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees, also in CEE.

After working as a post doctorate at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, he went on to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he analyzed remote sensing data to monitor crop development and conditions.

But it was at NASA that Bill really found his home in 1989, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. He conducted remote sensing research on soil moisture and led the Science Group at Goddard’s Earth Sciences Data Center in managing the voluminous climate-related data from NASA missions.

As he neared retirement in early 2022, Bill was looking for ways to continue his NASA work via other means. Then he found Third Act. Driven by a desire to leave a more livable planet for future generations – as well as for his almost-100-year young mother – he has purposefully moved from science research to something he thinks is more important: advocacy.

Bill loves the outdoors. He is a runner of marathons and other long-distance races, and an alumnus of the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. Both have led to his current research into the relationship between modern society’s disconnect with nature and climate crisis communication that motivates people to act. Toward that end, he and others are working to create short videos on the effects of a warming climate on what matters in people’s daily lives, like coffee production and outdoor activities.

As Bill  says, “sooner or later, a warming climate will come for what matters to you.”