Maryland Energy Administration: study finds major buildout needed to reach 100% clean electricity by 2035

Director Paul Pinsky, Maryland Energy Administration, told the Economic Matters Committee that the administration’s analysis of pathways to 100% clean electricity projects a major increase in generation capacity and significant policy tradeoffs.

“This study should be seen as a starting point for conversation. It’s not an endpoint. It is a foundation,” Pinsky said as he introduced the 72‑page report prepared for the committee.

The report presents three modeling scenarios: (1) a pathway that assumes 100% of the state’s generation is produced in Maryland; (2) a pathway that assumes Maryland imports 20% of its electricity; and (3) a “maintenance” case that continues current imports at roughly 39–40%. The administration said it asked the consultant to constrain some resource deployments (for example, caps on onshore solar and wind and limits on offshore wind) so the outputs would be geographically realistic for Maryland.

Under the study’s primary decarbonization run, Maryland’s current installed capacity of about 12 gigawatts would need roughly 9.6 additional gigawatts—about a 75% increase—by 2035 to meet a 100% in‑state clean generation benchmark. The modeling showed solar and land‑based wind are the least‑cost clean resources but are limited by land availability and siting…