Failure to adopt reforms to the regional power grid could drive up household energy costs by nearly 60% over the next 15 years, a climate group said this week, a claim that drew support from a top Maryland energy official.

The group’s study, which also examined paths to energy savings across the mid-Atlantic and Appalachia, found that Maryland residents could save $546 on average annually between now and 2040 if the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, takes a series of recommended actions.

PJM has faced criticism across the region for its management of a yearslong backlog of new energy projects waiting to hook up to the grid, most of them sources of clean energy. The result, critics have argued, is higher bills for ratepayers and a hampered effort to eliminate climate-warming emissions from the energy system.

Officials from Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania joined press calls earlier this week alongside the group Evergreen Action, which commissioned the report, to blast PJM’s management.

“PJM is keeping the market from delivering these cost savings to customers,” said Charles Harper, senior policy lead for the power sector at Evergreen Action. “Fixing the queue is challenging. But paying $500 per year in unnecessarily higher costs is unacceptable.”

In a statement, PJM spokesman Jeffrey Shields said the grid operator isn’t sure “who Evergreen Action is or who funds them,” but he described their report as part of a pattern of unfair attacks.

“[An] entity produces a report with outlandish assumptions but with a conclusion that is quotable. Those interested in shifting blame to PJM then point to that study for their political benefit and launch a coordinated campaign,” said Shields. “It’s an exercise in blame shifting that is not actually helping to solve the supply/demand challenge leading to higher prices for consumers. Consumers deserve better.”

Grid operators in other regions have struggled to get energy developments online fast enough, but PJM’s queue has been particularly inefficient. One report assessing these interconnection queues, released earlier this year by the group GridStrategies, gave PJM the lowest grade of the country’s seven regional grid operators.

Exacerbating tensions in the PJM region are projections by the grid operator of ballooning energy demands on the power grid driven by electrification and power-hungry data centers.

During the recently concluded legislative session, Democratic lawmakers passed sweeping legislation aimed at curbing energy prices and bolstering their leverage in dealings with PJM. At the same time, transmission line projects that PJM says are crucial to keeping the lights on have turned into energy battle lines.

The backlog in PJM’s queue — including delays of as much as five years for some projects — was one factor in a record-setting 800% jump in electricity prices at the grid operator’s capacity auction last year. Customers across PJM’s 13 state members are expected to collectively pay $14.7 billion for their electricity delivery starting this June, compared to $2.2 billion after the previous auction.

While Maryland leaders have criticized PJM’s grid management in recent years, Pennsylvania has been at the forefront of a pressure campaign.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has suggested that he could pull his state, the second-largest power-producing state in the country, out of the regional grid if PJM doesn’t take action to address rising energy costs. Shapiro filed a complaint in January with federal energy regulators, backed by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and other governors, that resulted in an agreement with the grid operator to institute a price cap on its next capacity auction.

Evergreen Action’s study, conducted by the consulting firm Synapse Energy Economics, recommends that PJM institute several reforms to streamline its queue.

Among them, Synapse says PJM should set a mandatory 150-day limit on the study period for new projects; PJM has told federal regulators that the process should allow for over a year.

The report also suggests that PJM should revise the way it models the impact of battery storage on the grid, create a long-term plan for transmission infrastructure and make it easier for developers to take over grid interconnection agreements from retiring power plants.

Some, like Maryland Energy Administration Director Paul Pinksy, who spoke alongside Evergreen Action this week, argue that PJM’s process gives too much favor to fossil fuel resources like natural gas.

Pinsky said Maryland isn’t threatening to pull out of PJM, as Pennsylvania has floated, but he said Maryland and other states need to band together to put more pressure on the grid operator to institute reforms.

“If a number of the states and D.C. can voice very clearly and loudly that we’re unhappy, we’re not satisfied and changes have to happen,” said Pinsky, “then maybe we can bring PJM into the 21st Century.”

Synapse estimates that by leveling the playing field between renewable energy sources and fossil fuels such as natural gas, carbon dioxide emissions would decline 14% compared to the status quo scenario. The wave of new development that would come with a more efficient queue would lead to 3,000 additional jobs in the region, the consultant projects.

Modeling by Synapse found that queue reforms would dramatically speed new power sources — fossil fuel and renewable.

Though advocates argue that PJM hasn’t done enough to resolve its backlog, the company points to steps in recent years that have put it on its way to fixing the problem.

Shields said that by late next year, PJM will have processed around 200 gigawatts of projects to completion. About 50 gigawatts of projects, mostly renewable, have made it through the queue and are ready to build, while many projects that have dropped out were “speculative” to begin with, Shields said.

PJM also expects to clear the queue of another 66 gigawatts of projects over the next two years. Shields said a revised queue process will get projects through the line within two years.

States’ criticisms of PJM drew the attention of officials from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week. Agency leaders came to the grid operator’s defense during a Thursday meeting.

“I just want to say I think that a lot of this criticism I have seen in the media directed at PJM and its management, and blaming them, for everything that’s wrong with the PJM capacity market, I think is in many ways misplaced,” said FERC Chairman Mark Christie, who was nominated by President Donald Trump during his first term. “A lot of it is because of state policies that have sort of come to a head just recently.”

Pinsky, though, argued that mismanagement by PJM remains one of the biggest obstacles Maryland faces to cut greenhouse gas emissions and lower household bills.

Maryland isn’t going to do anything rash, Pinsky said.

“But you hear conversations among other states who are saying, ‘Is it serving us well? Should we pull out?’” he said. “I think those conversations are going to grow.”