Maryland and eight other Northeastern states last month released a first-of-its-kind transmission action plan. Experts view it as a direct response to years of frustration with regional grid operators over stalled clean energy projects and surging electricity costs that states say undercut their climate mandates and reflect the outsized influence of private utility interests.
Known as the Northeast States Collaborative on Interregional Transmission, the group includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
The Strategic Action Plan on Interregional Transmission, unveiled on April 28, lays the groundwork for an alternative model of interregional energy cooperation in which states shape the future of the grid.
It proposes a state-led governance framework for identifying, advancing and financing interregional transmission projects that serve public interest goals, not just market profits.
“Increased transmission capacity can provide consumer cost savings and reduce the need for fossil-fueled power plants that exist solely to meet peak demand,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement announcing the initiative. “This collaboration illustrates exactly why state-led action is so important.”
The strategic action plan identifies the so-called “missing middle” in grid planning: the absence of a process for states across regions to collaborate on interregional transmission projects.
“No process currently exists for groups of states spanning different transmission planning regions to take the various steps necessary to identify, evaluate, select, and agree to share the cost of beneficial interregional transmission projects so they can be developed,” the plan states. Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey fall in the territory of PJM Interconnection, while the New England states have a separate grid operator, ISO-New England, and New York has its own independent system operator.
The current structure creates a “triple hurdle,” according to the plan, requiring potential interregional projects to be approved separately by each planning region and again in a joint evaluation, making it nearly impossible for beneficial projects to advance.
To fill that vacuum, the states plan to launch a coordinated Request for Information to identify “low-regrets” transmission projects that can deliver immediate reliability and clean energy benefits. The plan also identifies transmission equipment standardization as a key to reducing the cost of transmission development.
A new cost allocation framework will prioritize emissions reductions and consumer savings over legacy utility preferences. Additionally, the alliance intends to create a multi-state equipment procurement pool to lower costs and accelerate deployment of critical grid infrastructure.
The multi-state effort follows years of wrangling between some states, including Maryland, and PJM, the region’s biggest grid operator.
In recent months, Moore joined the governors of Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey in demanding that PJM reform its interconnection queue, where hundreds of clean energy projects have been stuck for years. These delays have stalled critical renewable infrastructure the states needed to meet legally binding climate targets, the governors argue.
Meanwhile, residential customers were hit with a rate surge last year after PJM’s 2025/26 capacity auction sent costs soaring from $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion in a single year. State officials blamed flawed auction rules and PJM’s exclusion of two Baltimore plants from the energy pool.
The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, the state’s consumer watchdog agency, recently filed two major legal challenges against PJM at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Pennsylvania separately mounted legal action, with Gov. Josh Shapiro calling PJM’s capacity market “unjust and unreasonable” and warning that the auction’s design threatens to impose “astronomical costs that will not produce a commensurate benefit” for consumers across the region.
Experts say continuing frictions like these, coupled with a lack of a system for interregional energy cooperation, provided impetus for states to come up with an arrangement to secure their energy goals and protect ratepayers.
“The states have come to realize that all of these decisions that PJM makes around transmission, investment, capacity markets and the costs associated with them ultimately get passed on to consumers in their states,” said Jon Gordon of Advanced Energy United, an industry association. “The states are fed up with being handed the bill for flawed market designs.”
Susan Miller, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, underscored the lack of transparency. “PJM’s process is very opaque, and then just all of a sudden you hear a transmission line is approved when there wasn’t much going on about it beforehand, for people to be able to intervene and weigh in, or at least know what’s going on.”
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Donate NowThe new collaborative, Miller said, is designed to address real-world changes that grid operators seem unwilling or unable to incorporate.
While PJM and other regional grid operators are invited to serve as technical advisors, experts say the plan marks a clear shift in governance, placing states firmly in the lead.
In emailed comments, PJM spokesperson Dan Lockwood said the organization looks forward to “continued engagement with the states in the collaborative,” without directly commenting on whether its governance structures would adapt in response to the states’ new planning framework.
He added that PJM supports FERC’s push for “long-term, forward-looking, scenario-based planning” and emphasized that “all of our states play a very important role” in transmission planning.
Responding to Maryland’s criticisms over surging capacity costs, interconnection delays and cost allocations for out-of-state infrastructure, PJM defended its market outcomes by attributing higher prices to “a decreasing electricity supply and increasing demand,” particularly in Maryland, which Lockwood described as a “net importer of power” with limited transmission infrastructure in the eastern part of the state.
The spokesperson advised Maryland to avoid pushing older generation off the system “until an adequate quantity of replacement generation is online and operating,” noting that “it will take a significant amount of, for instance, solar, to replace one retiring gas generator.” The organization also called on Maryland to expedite permitting and work with developers to ease construction barriers.
Cullen Howe, a senior advocate specializing in transmission systems at the Natural Resources Defense Council said the collaborative offers mutual benefits for states within PJM, such as Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware, with aggressive clean energy goals.
“As many of these states are striving to meet renewable energy mandates, the collaborative provides a unique opportunity to address the transmission challenges that accompany large-scale renewable energy integration, including offshore wind,” he said.
According to Howe, the collaborative’s plan proactively addresses the “missing middle” in transmission planning by proposing concrete steps for states to identify and advance interregional projects.
“This includes developing uniform high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable technology design standards, aligning offshore wind and transmission procurements and creating interregional coordination principles for compliance filings,” he said.
The plan also anticipates FERC’s Order 1920, finalized earlier this year, that requires regional transmission organizations like PJM to undertake long-term transmission planning in view of states’ energy policies. But compliance is not due until August 2025, and advocates worry that RTOs will slow-walk implementation.
Howe believes the new plan will complement and, in some areas, accelerate the goals set forth in FERC’s order.
For Maryland, the move ties into a broader political shift. Moore and governors from neighboring states have called for PJM to reform its rules after the 2024 capacity market price surge. While a temporary auction price cap has been agreed to, Maryland officials remain wary.
Analysts say the multi-state collaborative reflects a recognition that the current governance model—where regional grid operators prioritize incumbent utilities—does not align with states’ clean energy goals.
“States within PJM that are aiming to decarbonize their energy systems, many of which are net importers of energy [like Maryland], face the challenge of ensuring that the infrastructure needed to transport renewable energy is built in a cost-effective and coordinated manner,” Howe said. The collaborative’s focus on interregional transmission can help streamline the process.
Nick Lawton, an attorney with Earthjustice, said this type of state collaboration is essential, because the states that are working together span regions where he believes grid operators have been moving too slowly to plan essential interregional transmission projects.
“Thousands of clean energy projects are waiting to connect to the grid, including offshore wind projects that many of these states are pursuing, which can bring down prices and boost system reliability during extreme weather,” Lawson said. “We support this state coordination.”
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Aman Azhar is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who covers environmental justice for Inside Climate News with focus on Baltimore-Maryland area. He has previously worked as a broadcast journalist and multimedia producer for the BBC World Service, VOA News and other international news organizations, reporting from London, Islamabad, the United Arab Emirates and New York. He holds a graduate degree in Anthropology of Media from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MA in Political Science from the University of the Punjab, and is the recipient of the Chevening scholarship from the UK government and an academic scholarship for graduate studies from the Australian government.
