Maryland Leads Multistate Push to Shield Consumers from New Data Center Costs

Maryland lawmakers are leading a multistate, bipartisan effort to insulate ratepayers from the anticipated electricity price hikes as PJM Interconnection, the grid operator servicing 13 states and the District of Columbia, draws up proposals for investing hundreds of billions of dollars in grid upgrades, primarily to accommodate the load growth from new data centers.

The newly formed PJM State Legislators’ Collaborative, launched last week by Maryland Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D–Howard and Montgomery counties), brings together more than 60 lawmakers from across the PJM region, according to a statement from Hester’s office. The goal is to pressure the grid operator and federal regulators to prevent the costs associated with new data center-led demand from being passed on to households already