Standing in front of City Hall, Arjun Makhijani described a bleak future for Maryland, and especially Baltimore, if utilities like Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) are allowed to continue investing heavily in new gas infrastructure, locking in decades of soaring rates.

While homeowners with resources will be able to make the switch to electric heat and appliances, renters and others unable to do likewise may well see their rates “increase two times, three times, five times,” said Makhijani, president of the Takoma Park-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

His new report for the Abell Foundation documents disastrous impacts for Marylanders from these investments.

“Homelessness, conflicts due to bills and rent – already pretty high in this city – will increase,” Makhijani predicted. “The energy burden will go up to 20%, 30%, 50% or more of income, if this goes on in this way.”

He spoke as part of a final plea from an alliance of ratepayer advocates calling on the Public Service Commission to reject BGE’s multi-year $602.4 million rate increase request.

The PSC’s decision is expected to be announced today.

“Our message to the PSC is clear: just say no to BGE’s three-year, ratepayer-subsidized” rate hikes, said City Councilman Zeke Cohen, who organized yesterday’s news conference along with representatives of several organizations opposed to the company’s request.

“This plan is profitable for BGE at the ratepayer’s expense,” Cohen said, pointing to the considerable power wielded by the private company, Maryland’s largest natural gas provider.

“BGE shut off service to over 60,000 customers in 2022 alone.” Cohen said.

Activist Ray Kelly, a West Baltimore resident, said the increases would have devastating impacts on the people whose interests he has long represented.

“Many residents of neighborhoods such as Sandtown and Upton are still struggling to emerge from the effects and circumstances of the pandemic as well as adjust to the fragile economy, inflation and the increases already occurring for all of our municipal services including BGE,” said Kelly, executive director of the Citizens Policing Project.

“They are going into the winter months figuring out how they are going to make it to the next paycheck” he continued.

“At what point does BGE look beyond their bottom line and and understand and how these increases continue to devastate the city’s most vulnerable populations – essentially taking food off our plates?”

Worry that the PSC will “rubber stamp”

BGE officials have said estimates of decades of soaring rate hikes triggered by its planned $1.8 billion in new gas infrastructure are overblown and that pipe replacement and other investments are needed for safety.

According to its application, the company’s three-year rate hike request will increase the average residential customer’s bill by 5% per year.

BGE, whose parent is Chicago-based Exelon, provides electric distribution service to more than 1.3 million customers and gas service to 700,000 customers in the greater central Maryland region, including Baltimore and all or part of 10 surrounding counties.

Speaker after speaker yesterday said the company’s investments have not been shown to prevent injuries and fatalities (“They play the safety card”) and instead yoke the state to environmentally harmful natural gas systems.

“Utility companies are blocking our transition to renewable energy while raising rates on working families, despite the fact that we have to urgently phase out fossil fuels to avoid climate catastrophe,” said Taylor Smith-Hams, senior organizer with 350.org, the international  group working to promote renewable energy and “end the age of fossil fuels.”

An even blunter assessment came from lawyer Thiru Vignarajah, who represented the city residents last summer in their successful fight against BGE’s external gas regulator initiative

“BGE has found a way to bully and bulldoze its way across this city leaving neighborhoods, sidewalks and streets in disarray, leaving customers who couldn’t afford it without gas or electric service and reinforcing our dependence on a gas infrastructure that is quite literally destroying the planet,” the former Maryland deputy attorney general said.

He said the company has gotten away with unjustifiable conduct by “depending on the public’s apathy” and a PSC “that will rubber stamp everything they do.”

“They have relied on complicity of public officials –  the tacit silence of public officials who are supposed to hold them accountable.”