Bill Positions

Bill Number: SB 713

Bill Title: Public and Commercial Buildings - Energy Benchmarking and Disclosure

Bill Sponsor(s): Sen. Lenett, et al.

Subject: Environment & Energy

Committee: FIN

Bill Summary: This bill would have required gas or electric companies to maintain, in a specified format, gas or electric consumption records for nonresidential retail gas and electric customers. It would have required a gas or electric company to upload to the EPA Portfolio Manager certain gas consumption records after receiving authorization from an owner or operator of a nonresidential building. The bill would also have required that certain commercial buildings be benchmarked annually, beginning in certain years, using the EPA Portfolio Manage.

History: This bill received an UNF report by the FIN Committee. Its companion bill was withdrawn by the sponsor.

Chamber Position: Oppose

Position Summary: This bill would have unnecessarily burdened electric companies and commercial owners or operators with additional reporting and benchmarking requirements. These burdensome requirements were premature and overly stringent, and would have been very costly for the targeted parties, particularly those small businesses that would fall into the wide scope of this legislation. These businesses should not be required to perform additional tasks that fall significantly outside the range of their functions, responsibilities, resources or expertise. Additionally, the bill did not take into consideration the significant additional costs that would be incurred as a result of implementing the process to make use of the EPA Portfolio Manager. For these reasons, the Maryland Chamber opposed this bill.

Position Statement: To view the Chamber's complete position statement, click here (pdf).

Chamber Staff: Allyson Black

General Assembly: Click here to view the bill on the Maryland General Assembly's website.