STRIDE

Enacted in 2013, the Strategic Infrastructure Development and Enhancement Plan (STRIDE) law encourages gas utilities to replace certain aging gas infrastructure by allowing for accelerated recovery of infrastructure investment costs. STRIDE enables gas utilities to recover the estimated costs of projects through a surcharge prior or contemporaneous to carrying out the work. While theoretically limited to a $2 surcharge cap, as a practical matter, the cap has done little to limit accelerated recovery because utilities are able to reset the surcharge in rate cases, which they have filed frequently. STRIDE thus gives utilities an easier and faster method of recovering the costs of gas infrastructure spending from customers than conventional utility cost recovery does. For more information about gas spending on infrastructure and how utilities make money from such projects, listen to this podcast or visit “gas planning petition” and “utility rates and basics.”

As of February 2025, Maryland’s gas utilities have spent more than $2.1 billion on new gas infrastructure—including the large gas pipelines known as “mains,” customer service pipes, meters, and regulators, and other infrastructure—under STRIDE. By 2043, they are projected to spend another $7.2 billion, and ratepayers will have paid about $11.3 billion—including the utilities’ return. Assuming STRIDE spending ends around 2043, customers won't finish paying for STRIDE until the end of the century. Because the investment costs are recovered over an extended period with the utilities’ return, as of February 2025, customers have paid only about three percent of what STRIDE will ultimately cost them. If STRIDE spending continues unchecked, ratepayers will be expected to pay more than $31.3 billion by 2100 for STRIDE projects alone.

Advocacy work:

OPC has been advocating for reforming the STRIDE statute and its implementation for many years. In this op-ed in 2021, the People’s Counsel warned that STRIDE spending was costly for customers and should be reformed, particularly given the State’s climate policies. We repeatedly warned and advocated against amendments to STRIDE statute that would have resulted in even greater rate increases -- permitting a surcharge above $2.00 and moving eligible infrastructure projects under STRIDE into base rates at the time of each annual rate change within a multi-year rate plan. To read oppositional testimony, click here, here and here. 

While the STRIDE program could be eliminated without impacting the utilities' core obligation of providing safe and reliable service, OPC has advanced compromise legislation at the General Assembly to improve STRIDE by requiring gas utility companies to prioritize replacement based on risk, use alternatives to replacement where less costly, and provide notice to customers should customers want to electrify to avoid costs of infrastructure replacement. That legislation, incorporated into House Bill 1035, passed both chambers in 2025 and became law with the Governor's signature on May 20, 2025. To read OPC's supporting testimony, click here, here and here. To read OPC's HB419 factsheet that provides greater justification for these modest STRIDE improvements, click here.

For more information and specific responses, please visit STRIDE FAQs.

Resources:

  • To hear People's Counsel David Lapp discuss STRIDE, The Program Driving Up Everyone's Energy Bill on the Maryland Energy Talk podcast, click here (January 2025)
  • To return to OPC's main page on gas infrastructure spending, click here 
  • To view People’s Counsel David Lapp’s Maryland Gas Utility Infrastructure Spending presentation for Maryland Commission on Climate Change, click here (October 2013)

Op-Eds:

Press Releases: