Maryland should require a quarter of the energy residents use to come from renewable sources within the next five years, a group of Democratic state lawmakers said Tuesday.
The legislators, speaking on the ninth day of an international climate change conference in Paris, said they hope to get the new requirements passed when the legislature meets in January.
The majority of Maryland’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, and current law requires the state to increase the portion coming from clean sources to 20 percent by the year 2022.
The proposal announced Tuesday would increase the requirement to 25 percent in addition to pushing up the deadline by two years. The bill also proposes to spend $40 million on training for clean energy workers, as well as loans and capital investments to support primarily minority- and women-owned businesses in the sector.
The money comes primarily from a payment Dominion Resources made in exchange for a permit to build a natural gas export facility at Cove Point in Calvert County.
Sen. Rich Madaleno, a Democrat from Montgomery County, said the program would create 2,000 “middle-income” jobs and eliminate between 25 and 50 deaths that occur each year as a result of poor air quality.
"When we succeed with this bill, we will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our state by 2.7 million metric tons per year," he said. "That's the equivalent of taking 563 passenger vehicles off the road every year."
A bill introduced last year would have required the state acquire more than a third of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2023. That effort didn’t make it out of committee.