Action needed to address Washington Gas’s compliance with 2025 infrastructure replacement law, OPC tells regulators
BALTIMORE – The Public Service Commission should revisit its decision to allow Washington Gas to continue its gas infrastructure replacement work without demonstrating compliance with 2025 reforms to the STRIDE law, the Office of People’s Counsel said in a filing with the Commission this week. OPC’s filing also asked the Commission to clarify that the reforms apply to the utility’s current five-year gas pipe replacement plan and to expand a new STRIDE rulemaking proceeding to cover non-STRIDE gas infrastructure work also addressed in the 2025 law.
“The Next Generation Energy Act (NGEA) required utilities to demonstrate cost effectiveness and to evaluate alternatives before they can recover costs of STRIDE work,” said Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp. “STRIDE reforms were effective as of June 1, 2025, but Washington Gas customers continue to pay for gas infrastructure replacement without the utility having shown compliance.”
STRIDE—which stands for Strategic Infrastructure Development and Enhancement—was enacted in 2013 to allow gas utilities to benefit from accelerated cost recovery for work to replace aging infrastructure. STRIDE requires gas companies to file and the Commission to approve five-year plans, which the Commission may revisit at any time.
OPC analyses have demonstrated how STRIDE has contributed to fast-growing gas distribution rates and creates risks of costs that substantially exceed benefits. As gas consumption declines due to competition from highly efficient electric technologies, customer concerns about health and safety, and climate policy, the costs of the gas infrastructure will be spread among fewer customers, further increasing rates.
In October 2025, the Commission issued an order agreeing with OPC that the NGEA authorizes it to review Washington Gas’s five-year STRIDE plan under the NGEA standards. It directed WGL to justify how its plan complies with the NGEA or propose revisions to bring it into compliance. But Washington Gas filed its STRIDE project list for 2026 without showing compliance, suggesting that its 2026 projects constituted “ongoing work” and were exempt from compliance.
After several other OPC and utility filings, in February this year, the Commission approved the utility’s 2026 projects and its bill surcharge to collect STRIDE costs without determining whether the projects comply with the NGEA. The Commission stated that, instead of deciding whether Washington Gas’s 2026 projects comply with the NGEA, it would hold a rulemaking proceeding to implement the NGEA’s STRIDE reform measures.
OPC’s filing this week supports the Commission’s rulemaking proceeding but explains that the rulemaking does not excuse Washington Gas from demonstrating NGEA compliance for its ongoing work occurring now, almost a year after the NGEA’s effective date.
OPC’s filing asks the Commission to clarify whether it intends to review Washington Gas’s 2027 and 2028 project lists—both of which will also be part of the utility’s current five-year STRIDE plan—for compliance with the NGEA. It further requests that the Commission expand the NGEA rulemaking to cover cost recovery standards for non-STRIDE gas capital investments, which are subject to similar requirements for demonstrating customer benefits and cost-effective alternatives that defer, reduce, or eliminate the need for the investments.
The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel is an independent state agency that represents Maryland’s residential consumers of electric, natural gas, telecommunications, private water and certain transportation matters before the Public Service Commission, federal regulatory agencies and the courts.
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