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, that surcharge is easily reset in a rate case to continue accelerated recovery. This gives the utility 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. 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 the 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. 

OPC has advanced legislation at the General Assembly's 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 passed both chambers in 2025 and is expected to be signed by the Governor. 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: