But Nazarian issued a full-throated endorsement of the plan yesterday, arguing that utilities needed the authority to impose small fees on all customers to stimulate a broad "cultural change" of decreased energy consumption. He said regulators are taking pains to minimize the cost to consumers, noting that the commission in August rejected a more costly BGE proposal that would have been borne almost entirely by residential consumers.
The BGE plan approved yesterday anticipates a $390 million investment in energy conservation through 2015, which the Baltimore-based utility can recover through fees imposed on industrial, business and residential customers. The state's four other electric companies - Pepco, Delmarva Power & Light Co., Allegheny Power and Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative - have 90 days to propose a cost structure for their respective energy conservation programs.
Most of the plans share similar features and are designed to make it less expensive for people to replace inefficient lighting fixtures, upgrade to energy-saving appliances and install thermostats that manage usage during peak demand times.
Nazarian said he was most excited by a BGE "quick home energy check-up" initiative in which a BGE contractor audits a home and suggests energy-saving upgrades. If the homeowner agrees to have BGE install, free of charge, energy-saving devices such as compact fluorescent lightbulbs, the utility will waive the $40 check-up charge.
"We cannot recommend strongly enough that every BGE customer take advantage of this opportunity," regulators wrote in the order issued yesterday. "If you request a quick home energy audit .... you will save more than you will pay in surcharges, even if you do nothing else."
A BGE spokeswoman declined to comment yesterday, saying officials there had not yet reviewed the PSC's order, which was released late in the day.
When all five electric company plans are up and running, the energy-conservation initiatives will represent investment of about $1 billion through 2015, said Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration, who called yesterday's actions "the first significant step" toward achieving O'Malley's conservation goals.
Maryland's goal of drastically reducing peak-energy consumption by 2015 is an "ambitious" goal that "no state has yet achieved," Malcolm acknowledged. "But few states have faced the energy challenges that Maryland has," he added.
