Please join us on Tuesday evening, February 27, at 7pm for 350MoCo’s February Monthly Meeting. We’re thrilled to announce that two deeply informed and knowledgeable speakers will join us to give updates on key climate justice, clean energy and utility transition bills before the Assembly this session. The Zoom link to join is here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84103142728?pwd=MFMvODNmOGlUTldhQm5vejUreDNKUT09

The 2024 session of the Maryland General Assembly is almost at its mid-point. A record number of bills have been filed this year, so legislators’ workload is particularly high. To add to the burden, the looming budget crunch has brought laser attention to the costs and revenue-generating potential of each bill.

In the midst of all the pressure and swirl, how are climate-related and climate justice bills faring? We are very pleased to announce two deeply knowledgeable speakers who can cast a lot of light on the challenges and progress of some of the key climate justice bills we are following this session:

• Emily Scarr has been Executive Director of the Maryland Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) since 2013. This year, she has been deeply involved in strategizing on several bills, including the EmPOWER reform legislation.  Emily has agreed to join us to provide an update on this key bill’s progress through Committees and hearings so far and its prospects for passing.
• Laurel Peltier is a long-time energy advocate for low-income households in north Baltimore’s Govans neighborhood, and coordinator of the Maryland Energy Advocates Coalition. Through her terrific work, she found that “third party energy retailers” promising low cost clean energy have in fact overcharged Marylanders by $1.2 billion over just the past few years while failing to support clean power development.  Worse, a big part of this scam has fallen on low-income households.  Laurel will talk about HB 267/SB 1, the Electricity and Gas – Retail Supply – Regulation and Consumer Protection bill, which she helped shape to clean up Maryland’s clean energy market in key ways.

Join us to learn about how the General Assembly works in general and the progress of key clean energy, climate justice and climate-related bills in particular. Emily and Laurel are both tracking a variety of other bills, so can answer many questions on those.

Mark your calendars and join us at 7pm SHARP next Tuesday, February 27. Zoom link (cut and paste into your browser) is here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84103142728?pwd=MFMvODNmOGlUTldhQm5vejUreDNKUT09