Another busy year in the Delaware General Assembly for the environment, with some amazing bills that are going to do amazing things for our state, as well as bills that we had to oppose because of the harm they would have caused to our state and communities.
In total, we worked on 25 bills and resolutions this year on issues that included (you can click on the subject to jump to the associated issue):
Data Centers have been a top priority issue for the Sierra Club and for communities across the nation, as they have impacted numerous neighborhoods with noise, air pollution, water impacts, and soaring energy bills. This year, Delaware really stepped up to the plate to work on addressing data center issues at the state and local level. This blog really only focuses on our legislative work in Dover, but we would be remiss not to mention the inordinate amount of work that was done in New Castle County on the data center ordinance there or the work ahead of us in Kent County on their efforts to follow suit. It's vital that we also mention that the Club did not work in isolation. We had an amazing coalition of organizations that worked on data center issues across the state through the DE-CLEAR coalition. Delaware couldn’t have done this without the support of so many organizations.
Summary: This bill would create a rate class specifically for large energy users, like data centers. This will make sure that they are on the hook for 100% of their own costs, not residential ratepayers or other businesses. Large energy users will have to pay for their own energy, local infrastructure, and long-term investments in the grid. The bill: Ends the obligation of the local utility to supply power to the facility; Includes early exit fees; Includes a must-buy provision for contracted power; Requirement for an Electrical Services Agreement that ensures the project's power supply is in line with state energy and climate policies; Requires that large loads pay a higher payment for our low-income and green energy fund; Removes an exemption for RPS compliance; Requires bonding; Requires local labor/prevailing wage; Applies an Incremental Cost Test to ensure all costs are being covered; Addresses curtailment (data centers go first); Addresses upcoming Reliability Auctions at PJM; and so much more!
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: Since Project Washington, a proposed hyperscale 1.2GW data center in Delaware City, was announced last summer, advocates, legislators, and community members have been concerned that data centers were going to come to Delaware and stick us with the bill for their energy and infrastructure needs. It quickly became clear that neither Delmarva nor the state was ready to assign costs to data centers to ensure they were on the hook for both short- and long-term investments in the grid and energy. Alongside members of DE-CLEAR (Delaware Data Center Coalition for Local, Environmental, and Accountable Regulation), the Sierra Club and other organizations canvassed communities near proposed data centers, prepared multiple video series, held or participated in town halls, testified in committees, sent mailers, and so much more to help make these data center regulation bills happen.
Summary: Data Centers demand an inordinate amount of power and place an extreme strain on our electrical grid. This bill ensures that data centers must build NEW power generation resources to meet 100% of their demand within 10 years of coming online, and cannot come online until 25% of their demand is met. It also states that at least 50% of the backup power needed by data centers must be supplied by energy storage, rather than just dirty diesel generators, 25% of which must be energized before the data center can connect to the grid. The bill requires that a certain percentage of power be clean and prohibits coal, peaker plants, or diesel generators from being used for baseload power.
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club worked with stakeholders, legislators, and the administration to ensure that this bill would not allow data centers to use the most polluting form of power generation to meet its mandates. We have seen firsthand in Tennessee and Texas what happens when you allow data centers to use as much power as they want. Namely, they use the cheapest, dirtiest power possible and be damned with the impact on communities around them. It happens that this power is also predominantly inefficient natural gas plants that also run up gas costs for the area, providing multiple hits on residents near the data center. We worked hard to ensure this would not happen in Delaware and that, instead, we would focus on a diverse energy mix with guaranteed clean power to meet the needs of these massive data center projects. We are proud that Delaware is now the first state in the nation to pass this type of legislation!
Summary: This bill would prohibit state agencies, counties, and municipalities from entering into non-disclosure agreements with data center developers and operators. For community members to meaningfully participate in advocacy on data centers, they need access to key details that can inform their approach.
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club worked with the coalition DE-CLEAR to push for guardrails for data center development. We have seen how difficult it is for communities across the country to fight back against data center developers due to NDAs and it was clear during our engagement with folks through canvassing and community meetings that this was something that folks cared about. Our coalition partners, members, and supporters worked together to contact legislators urging them to support the bill, provided public comments, and featured this bill in educational social media videos.
Summary: This was actually the first bill in the nation to amend the “obligation to serve” for utilities and electric cooperatives. Under current law, utilities have an obligation to serve when a business comes into their service territory, so long as the customer agrees to pay for any needed infrastructure upgrades. This bill changes that requirement for the Co-Op to say that if a data center comes into their area, they have to build any infrastructure that the development needs if the developer agrees to pay for it, but that they are under no obligation to supply them with the electricity to run on those lines. House Bill 233 has a similar provision for Delmarva Power.
Final Status: Passed and Signed by the Governor
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter was part of the conversations in the Energy Stakeholder group to ensure that this bill would be upheld if challenged in the courts, given that it was a first-of-its-kind bill. We were proud to support the bill in Dover and worked to have provisions included in HB 233.
Summary: This one is a wonky bill amongst wonky bills. To break it down at a high level, Delmarva Power is our state’s transmission operator and must report to PJM, our regional grid operator, what it expects Delaware's power demand to be each year for the next several years. Inaccurate forecasting means that PJM thinks we need more power than we actually do, which increases costs for all customers. This bill would add Public Service Commission (PSC) oversight to ensure, among other things, that any large loads included in the load forecast have financial commitments to ensure they are actually built and come online. It also ensures that data centers that are proposing to build the same project in multiple states are not double-counted, driving costs up even further.
Final Status: Passed, awaiting the Governor's signature
Sierra Club Work: The Delaware Chapter worked with Senator Hansen, the PSC, and the Public Advocate to make sure that the legislation included meaningful metrics to parse out what projects were included in the load forecast and what were left out, as well as ensuring that the double-counting issue was dealt with in the bill.
Energy affordability was still top of mind for legislators, as their constituents faced another winter season of above-average energy costs due to severe inclement weather. Once again this year, as was the case last year, many jumped on the opportunity to slam green energy and our work on reducing emissions. The math, however, did not support those arguments, as rising natural gas costs were found to be the predominant driver of energy costs. The second cost driver was found to be massive investments in the distribution system by Delmarva Power that did not meaningfully improve overall system reliability.
The second issue we dealt with this year was around third-party suppliers. In Delaware, you have to use the utility that serves your house for poles and wires; you can't shop around on that front. However, you can choose who supplies the power that runs along those poles and wires. Most people just choose the default, which is Delmarva Power, which purchases power via auctions that they run, but some choose a third party to supply their energy. This isn’t inherently a problem, but there are many bad actors in the industry. This led, for example, to one customer whose bill was $450 higher than it should have been because they used a third-party supplier instead of Delmarva Power for their supply.
Summary: This legislation was a long time coming. The bill finally reins in third-party suppliers by requiring that they no longer can auto-renew their contracts with customers, have to provide multiple renewal notices before any renewals are carried out, cannot use variable rates for supply, cannot charge rates higher than what Delmarva Power offers for power, unless it’s for renewable energy, and have to open their books to the PSC for additional oversight.
Final Status: Passed and awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club worked to support the bill and share stories about impacts from third-party suppliers in Delaware with members of the general assembly.
Summary: This bill does a number of things to increase transparency in rate cases, Delmarva Power bills, and in Public Service Commission processes. However, the most controversial component was a cost cap on non-mandatory spending by Delmarva Power and a prohibition on Delmarva implementing rate increases without Public Service Commission approval. There was a lot of back-and-forth about what was included in non-mandatory spending. In a nutshell, non-mandatory spending excludes reliability, storm response, vegetation management, and several other categories. However, over building the system for projected future growth would no longer be cost-effective under the cap, curbing the practice long used by Delmarva Power. There were also discussions about what the savings would be from passing the bill and whether the cost caps would be worth it. The reality is that these are long-term investments with long-term costs to ratepayers that are not reflected in a first-year analysis, which is what Delmarva Power would have preferred. This bill may not save customers a lot of money in its first year, but it will curb runaway spending, resulting in hundreds of dollars per customer saved after just 5 years of this law being in place.
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter did a lot of work on this bill. This included testifying in committee meetings, meeting with legislators and stakeholders, creating fact sheets and videos, and running ads on WDEL in support of the bill. A proposed amendment to the bill was put forward on the last day of session to remove the cost cap and interim rate increase provisions, effectively gutting the bill. The amendment was ultimately voted down, and the bill passed unamended.
Summary: This bill expands upon the codified electric vehicle rebate program to allow for greater adoption in low-income communities. The bill would give DNREC flexibility to offer different rebate structures to encourage wider adoption. Under the expanded program, businesses, nonprofits, schools, government agencies, and military servicemembers in Delaware could take advantage of rebates.
Final Status: Passed and awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club has long championed expanding access to electric vehicles to low-income communities and others throughout Delaware. We have continued to talk with legislators, DNREC, and community members to address questions and reservations about switching to electric vehicles.
Energy legislation has become the backbone of the Sierra Club Delaware Chapter's legislative work. Several years ago, it became apparent that the Chapter needed to answer the call to work on energy policy and provide a counterbalance to other right-wing organizations spreading misinformation in the energy policy space. We took up that call and have been working hard to provide factual information and positive policies that will align our environmental goals with our energy goals in Delaware. This year, we focused on bringing more clean electrons onto the grid and ensuring that everyone can benefit from programs like Community Solar. We also worked to stop policies that would have hurt ratepayers and our climate and energy goals.
Summary: This bill corrects issues found in practice as the state's community solar program got off the ground, namely, the way we counted how many customers for each project were low- or moderate-income, which the law required to be 15% of customers. We also made a change requiring that all community solar projects offer at least a 10% discount to all customers and at least a 20% discount on energy costs for low- or moderate-income families. The law also streamlined billing for those who choose to sign up for community solar so that they only have to pay one bill, their Delmarva bill. Prior to this legislation, customers had to pay their Delmarva bill, minus their discount for signing up for community solar, and then had to pay for their subscription on a separate bill from the community solar company. Now they will just have one bill to pay.
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter put a lot of work into this bill before it was filed, working with stakeholders in the community solar industry, the Public Advocate, Delmarva Power, and the Public Service Commission to ensure that customers were guaranteed a meaningful discount, that risks and costs were not shifted to non-participating customers, and that community solar companies did not charge any junk fees or cancelation fees, making our community solar program one of the strongest in the nation.
Summary: This bill clarified that a community solar project qualifies under the law as being in Delmarva’s territory as long as where the project connects to the grid is in Delmarva’s territory. This was an issue because you have some properties in Kent County, for example, where the house on the property is in the Co-Op territory, but the land and place the panels will connect to the grid is in Delmarva's territory. So this helped clarify that situation and open up more areas for community solar projects.
Final Status: Passed and Signed by the Governor
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter worked through the Energy Stakeholders group to help support and craft this legislation and supported it in the relevant legislative committees.
Summary: This bill would have set standards and a registration process for customers who chose to purchase and utilize plug-in solar kits offline. These kits generally produce small amounts of power, usually 400 to 1200 watts of power, and plug directly into a home electrical outlet. There were concerns raised during the stakeholder process regarding the safety of these systems, how the registration process would work, the safety of lineworkers working on a downed grid with these systems possibly still generating power, and how to prevent customers from being charged for excess power being sent back to the grid. These concerns ultimately led to the bill being tabled in lieu of a study, which is discussed below.
Final Status: Tabled
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter worked hard on this legislation, attending multiple meetings and dedicating hours of staff time to push for this bill and ensure consumers were protected against unreasonable registration processes, fees, or charges for unused energy. Ultimately, it was discovered that there were home safety concerns with the products currently available. Namely, the concern was about someone plugging in multiple kits on a single circuit in an older home, causing the wires to overheat and start an electrical fire. Although there have been no reports of this happening, these systems are still relatively new in the United States. In other countries, such as Germany, where these systems are more popular, they have different electrical codes that deal with these kinds of issues, codes that are not in place in the USA. Additionally, we could not reach an agreement that would prevent customers from being charged for excess power sent back to the grid without having to pay high interconnection fees imposed by the utility.
Summary: As stated above, this resolution came out of the discussions around the Plug-In Solar bill that didn't make it. This resolution commissioned a study through the Sustainable Energy Utility, Energize Delaware, to purchase 10 plug-in solar systems of different sizes and install them on properties in each utility territory to gather data on how much power was being produced and what the value of that power was for customers, how much was sent back to the grid, monitor safety and reliability issues and submit the data from the study back to the General Assembly so that we can be better informed for a plug-in solar bill for the next session.
Final Status: Passed and Enacted
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter fought hard for the plug-in solar bill, but when this resolution seemed the only way to move the issue forward, we worked to ensure the data we gathered accurately reflected the issues discussed during the stakeholder process.
Summary: Back in 2008, the state of Delaware passed legislation to create a standard for interconnecting renewable energy to the grid. Delmarva Power was required to implement that standard, which was created by the International Renewable Energy Council (IREC). Unfortunately, it was a one-time deal and the standard had not been updated since 2009. This bill would require Delmarva to update its standards whenever IREC issues a new standard for utilities to follow. It also states that if a utility deviates from that new standard, it has to get approval for that deviation from its regulatory body.
Final Status: Passed and Signed by the Governor
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter worked with Rep. Burns to draft this legislation in consultation with IREC and supported the bill every step of the way with fact sheets, committee testimony, and discussions with legislators.
Summary: House Bill 186 was a bipartisan bill in the Delaware legislature that would provide $450 million in tax credits that can be sold, allowing up to $45 million per year to three natural gas power plants, totaling no more than 500 MW each. Far from solving Delaware's energy challenges, this bill is likely to raise costs, enrich out-of-state corporations, and lock Delaware families into decades of volatile gas prices. In Delaware, we already have 2.4 GW of gas power capacity, which accounts for 90% of our in-state generation capacity. The problem is that these plants do not run enough to produce that amount of power because we have no natural gas reserves in Delaware, so we have to import 100% of the gas from Pennsylvania. There are plenty of gas plants in Pennsylvania, so it will always be cheaper to run those plants first and import the power. Building more gas plants will not change that fact. So we would be adding more gas, locking us into more expensive power, without any meaningful impact on how much power we actually produce in Delaware.
Final Status: Failed to be released from Committee
Sierra Club Work: The Chapter worked hard to educate legislators on the extreme costs of this legislation and the lack of meaningful progress it would make toward our energy goals, or even the bill's stated goals. We created fact sheets, did a video series on the bill, and held individual lobbying meetings with committee members, bill sponsors, and other interested legislators. Ultimately, the sponsor was convinced that the bill was too costly for no meaningful impact on energy availability in Delaware and requested that the hearing on the bill be postponed indefinitely.
Summary: This year 3 bills were introduced aiming to remove or restrict the existence of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the state of Delaware. As a market-based, cooperative effort to cap and reduce carbon emissions across the electric sector in 10 states, RGGI supports various energy programs aimed at a clean, efficient, and affordable energy future for all Delawareans. SB65 would have withdrawn Delaware from RGGI, thereby removing roughly $60 million annually in funding for energy and climate programs. SB64 aimed to cap future RGGI auctions at 2025 levels, and SS1 to SB64 would have allowed auction prices to continue to increase, but required that any proceeds above the 2025 cost would be rebated to the respective utility to be passed on to ratepayers.
Final Status: Failed to be released from Committee
Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club coordinated closely with relevant stakeholders and program administrators to call attention to the meaningful impacts RGGI funding has on Delawareans, to ensure that this bill died in committee so that RGGI could continue to fund a clean and affordable energy future for Delaware.
While conservation is not the main focus of the Delaware Chapter, it is obviously a top priority for the Chapter. We are proud to support the work of so many conservation-focused organizations in Delaware while also fighting for conservation through a lens of climate, energy, and environmental justice. This year, we have two bills that we supported in Legislative Hall dealing with conservation issues that are of the utmost importance to the Delaware Chapter and to the state as a whole.
Summary: This bill would create a regulatory and permitting program for nontidal freshwater wetlands. After the US Supreme Court’s Sackett decision, around 75,000 acres of wetlands were left unprotected and this bill would create a program to cover them. SB9 creates a Regulatory Advisory Council (RAC) that is composed of the same stakeholders who worked on this bill for several years. This group would work together to draft legislation that would determine how this regulatory and permitting program moves forward.
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club was one of the over 70 different stakeholders at the table as the bill was being discussed first as a general policy and eventually as a fully fleshed-out bill. This legislation is the first major piece of wetlands protection legislation in the country since the Sackett decision gutted federal wetlands protections in 2023. This policy has been a passion project for Senator Hansen for over two decades, with multiple attempts at various levels of government to protect freshwater wetlands. We will now go on to work on the RAC to help draft the regulations alongside over 20 of the stakeholders who worked on the original bill. Thank you to the many volunteers, including Ann Burass and Kristie Arlotta, who put in countless hours for the Chapter to get this bill drafted and across the finish line!
Summary: This bill focuses on removing barriers to infill development, curbing sprawling development, and creating a funding stream for multimodal infrastructure in walkable/bikeable communities. It does this by creating statewide impact fees that are higher in areas of the state that we are seeking to conserve and preserve, and lower in areas where we want to encourage development. The funding from those impact fees then supports open space and farmland preservation, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and brownfield revitalization. and more. The bill also ensures that counties encourage dense, infill development in our growth zones, rather than sprawling communities far from resources, thereby creating more traffic and impacts on our sensitive ecosystems.
Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Sierra Club Work: The Delaware Chapter fought back on a previous iteration of this bill because it actually would have encouraged more development in areas we want to preserve and conserve. This bill reverses that dynamic, and we supported the legislation by speaking up in committees, talking with legislators in lobby visits, and meeting with concerned members and supporters to highlight how this bill aligns with our Chapter priorities. The bill passed unanimously in both chambers and is now awaiting the signature of the Governor.
Summary: The Skip the Stuff Act builds upon recent efforts to curb plastic waste and pollution by limiting the amount of unnecessary products distributed to consumers. This bill would require customers to opt in to receive disposable and single-use products like sauce packets, napkins, and beverage splash sticks. The penalties under this bill, which would not exceed $1,500 per year, would not take effect until 2 years after its passage to give time to study the impacts and effectiveness of the program to avoid waste.
Final Status: Failed to be Released from the Senate Committee
Sierra Club Work: We worked with our partners at Plastic Free Delaware to amplify efforts to pass this bill and had discussions with legislators to encourage support of the bill.
Summary: This bill bans the sale of expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) products like styrofoam and applies to disposable coolers, EPS packing peanuts, and other single-use products. These products are not accepted at curbside recycling and are difficult to reuse and recycle otherwise.
Final Status: Failed to be Taken Up for a Vote
Sierra Club Work: We worked with our partners at Plastic Free Delaware to amplify efforts to pass this bill and had discussions with legislators to encourage support of the bill.