Author: CCAN Staff      Published: 4/11/2023      CCAN

Soon we’ll have enough offshore wind energy to power every MD home.
Thank your lawmakers!

Victory!! The General Assembly has just voted to quadruple Maryland’s offshore wind power! The Promoting Offshore Wind Energy Resource Act, or POWER Act (SB 781/HB793) will set the stage for 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind in Maryland — enough to power every home in our state.

This is a HUGE deal, so let’s be sure to say thank you to our state delegates and senators for voting for this bill.

Send a quick email to your Maryland lawmakers, thanking them for making offshore wind a reality in Maryland!

The POWER Act will bring good union jobs to Maryland, lower energy costs, and reduce pollution. It is a win-win-win, and it passed because we all raised our voices together to demand bold action to address the climate crisis.

Your Maryland lawmakers did the right thing. By passing this bill, they invested in a lot more offshore wind energy – which means they invested in our future. Take a moment to send them a thank you note.

The POWER Act does four things:

1. Sets a goal for the state go have 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2031
2. Builds the transmission we need to connect that much offshore wind to the grid
3. Directs the Department of General Services to directly purchase one gigawatt of offshore wind
4. Strengthens labor standards for building offshore wind

For more details on the bill, you can read this guide to the POWER Act.

The 8.5 gigawatts that Maryland will be generating is a LOT of energy. For context, our state currently has about 4.8 gigawatts of gas power. In 2025, after two more coal plants are scheduled to shut down, Maryland will only have 0.2 gigawatts of coal power. The POWER Act helps us build enough offshore wind energy to replace all our remaining fossil fuel generation and then some.

If you like the sound of building that much clean energy, please send a quick thank you note to your lawmakers!

This is not the first offshore wind bill Marland has passed, nor will it be the last. Thanks to the Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 and the Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2019, Maryland is already in the process of building 2 gigawatts of offshore wind. The POWER Act of 2023 builds 1 more gigawatt of offshore wind and sets a goal of building 8.5 gigawatts. This means that at some point in the near future, we will need another offshore wind bill to build the last 5.5 gigawatts, and we look forward to working with you on that bill too.

Onward,

Jamie DeMarco, Maryland Director,CCAN Action Fund,         advocacy arm of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network