Thank you for your coverage of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company’s budget-busting rate increases (Think your BGE bill is high? Rates are rising, Jan. 5, 2025). Your reporters note that BGE has thrown up its hands, claiming two-thirds of the factors leading to the rate hikes are out of its control.

But what BGE doesn’t want its customers to know is that the major cause of rising bills is the utility’s highly profitable multibillion-dollar “operation pipeline” program and other wasteful profit-driven capital spending that is delivering big for shareholders.

BGE gas customers have already seen their delivery rates more than triple since 2010 along with BGE profits, which more than tripled from $147 million in 2010 to $485 million in 2023. And if utility regulators and state leaders in Annapolis don’t act now, we’ll be seeing higher utility bills again 2026.

Wasteful spending on “gold-plated” gas infrastructure projects has been enabled by the Strategic Infrastructure Development and Enhancement law of 2013 and the wrongheaded multiyear rate-making pilot. Both of these programs provide financial incentive for the company to spend wastefully while shifting financial risk from their shareholders to their customers.

BGE spent about $160 million on their gas pipeline program in 2023, but after accounting for its profits and interest, that $160 million will cost customers about $576 million. The STRIDE law has virtually no cost constraints, no requirements that their spending be cost-effective and no requirements that gas pipeline spending prioritize safety.

As the General Assembly session begins in Annapolis, legislators cannot sit by as energy bills continue to soar. They must take action by passing legislation to repeal or reform the STRIDE program and our utility regulators should end multiyear rate-making.

Emily Scarr is a senior adviser of Maryland PIRG and the Maryland PIRG Foundation