Maryland’s only remaining coal-fired power plant is likely to keep operating through mid-2031 — six years after it was set to close — although the plan technically still requires approval from federal regulators.
The owner of the Brandon Shores coal plant south of Baltimore originally planned to close it in 2025. But officials threw up a red flag, and warned that the plant’s retirement would endanger the regional electricity grid.
That led to a plan to keep Brandon Shores, and a neighboring oil-fueled plant called H.A. Wagner, operational through May 2029, with Maryland ratepayers picking up the tab. Now, officials want to extend that very same agreement through May 2031.
Plant owner Talen Energy and grid operator PJM Interconnection have both asked federal regulators for approval in recent filings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. PJM requested a decision by early August.
Extensions for the two plants would be another setback for Maryland’s climate ambitions. Under state law, Maryland has until 2031 to reduce its in-state greenhouse gas emissions 60% from 2006 levels — a target it is already not on pace to hit.
And just last week, President Donald Trump (R) announced an influx of federal dollars for an effort to revive the coal-fired Warrior Run power plant in Western Maryland. Data center developers and energy companies have also shown interest in building new natural gas generation in Maryland, including at a shuttered coal plant on the Potomac River in Southern Maryland.
PJM believes the extension for Brandon Shores and Wagner is needed because the power transmission upgrades necessitated by the plant’s eventual retirement won’t be completed in time.
“The responsible Transmission Owners have begun project implementation and updated PJM with later projected in-service dates, in some instances by several years,” read a June affidavit from Mark Sims, senior manager of long-term and interregional transmission planning at PJM. “Given the locations of the required upgrades, the Transmission Owners anticipate challenges with land acquisition, permitting, and supply chain-related delays.”
One power line project to make up for Brandon Shores, assigned to Baltimore Gas & Electric on an emergency basis without a competitive procurement, has doubled in cost to about $1.5 billion, compared to original estimates.
PJM has also added to the list of transmission projects that must be completed before Brandon Shores and Wagner can retire, roping in several other projects that are underway — including the controversial Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, a 67-mile line planned to cross large tracts of undeveloped rural land in Central Maryland.
More transmission upgrades are needed, said PJM spokesperson Jeffrey Shields, because of “unprecedented” growth in electricity demand as well as “persistent deactivation requests” from power plants in PJM’s region, which includes Maryland, Washington, D.C., and all or parts of a dozen other states.
To Maryland People’s Counsel David Lapp, whose office represents utility ratepayers in regulatory matters, data centers are really the main reason the plants cannot retire in May 2029 as once planned.
“They’re saying we need these plants online even longer after that, because of other load growth,” Lapp said Wednesday. “That other load growth is data center growth — almost entirely outside the state of Maryland.”
In a complaint filed at the FERC last month, Lapp’s office argued that, over the last three years, PJM has unlawfully assigned Maryland ratepayers responsibility for $2 billion in transmission upgrades driven by data centers, unfairly inflating their electricity bills.
Lapp is among the many who have called for data center companies to pay all of their infrastructure costs. In some instances, though, PJM may have to police its system by telling data centers they cannot come online yet, Lapp said.
“The solution that no one is talking about is telling the data centers no, you can’t connect to the system, and we certainly think that needs to be a part of the discussion,” Lapp said.
From the beginning, the Sierra Club has also questioned the agreement extending the lives of Brandon Shores and Wagner.
In 2024, the environmental nonprofit commissioned an analysis showing that battery storage technology, paired with upgrades to existing power lines, among other small changes, could help offset the need to keep Brandon Shores running.
PJM, for its part, has dismissed the idea as “technically non-viable as a standalone solution.”
But the Sierra Club argues that the main issue is that PJM does not have sufficient procedures to prepare for generator deactivations before they happen — or to consider alternative solutions to building large, expensive new power lines.
“We want PJM looking forward and saying: Where are we really tight on transmission? Where are we one plant away from the lights going out?,” Justin Vickers, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, said Wednesday.
The club has seen “real progress” toward improvements at PJM, Vickers said, but new policies have yet to be implemented.
To Del. Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery), a key voice on energy matters in the General Assembly, the news of Brandon Shores’ extension was a “devastating” reminder of failures by PJM.
“Each year that air pollution is leaving Brandon Shores and going into the air, it is more children who are showing up in emergency rooms with asthma attacks, not going to school. It is someone whose life is cut short, because they are breathing that air,” said Charkoudian, the vice chair of the House Economic Matters committee.
She places blame largely with PJM, arguing that the grid operator failed in its planning — to the financial benefit of power transmission and generation companies.
But in 2024, Maryland policymakers also had a chance to pass a bill that would have evaluated the benefits of batteries at Brandon Shores, Charkoudian said. The bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
“Had the Senate joined the House and had the foresight on this, the storage could have been built and paid off, and now we’re going to give over a billion dollars of ratepayer money to a dying industry that’s also killing us,” she said.
Republicans in Annapolis blame Democrats, who hold both chambers in the General Assembly as well as the governor’s mansion, for shutting down fossil fuel plants prematurely because of their climate policies. Democrats argue economics shut the plants down.
“When a temporary emergency reliability agreement keeps getting extended, it’s no longer an emergency, it’s evidence of a policy failure,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Hershey (R-Upper Shore) in a statement Wednesday. “If Brandon Shores must remain online until 2031 to prevent reliability problems, then it is clear the state moved too aggressively to eliminate existing generation without ensuring replacement power was available.”
It isn’t clear precisely what extending the deal — called a reliability-must-run agreement, or RMR — would cost Maryland ratepayers, according to Lapp.
The agreement to keep Brandon Shores and Wagner running is costing Maryland ratepayers $180 million each year, he said. But ratepayers are now receiving a credit that could offset part — or even all — of that cost, Lapp said.
The credit came about after Lapp’s office challenged the fact that, although the two plants would be contributing to the grid, their power supply would not be counted in a key energy auction, artificially driving prices for consumers $5 billion higher.
It’s not clear how much the credit will be in the coming years. And any repairs that Talen deems necessary to keep the plant running would also add to the cost, Lapp said.
Meanwhile, Lapp’s office is also challenging the $180 million price tag. In a news release last March, the People’s Counsel revealed that the actual cost to keep the plants running is $83 million lower than what Maryland ratepayers are being charged.
“FERC should reject the proposed settlement as unlawfully providing Talen a windfall of at least $83 million a year,” Lapp said at the time. “Talen’s windfall would come directly out of the pocketbooks of Maryland households already burdened with high utility bills.”
