Maryland and eight other Northeastern states last month released a first-of-its-kind transmission action plan. Experts view it as a direct response to years of frustration with regional grid operators over stalled clean energy projects and surging electricity costs that states say undercut their climate mandates and reflect the outsized influence of private utility interests.

Known as the Northeast States Collaborative on Interregional Transmission, the group includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. 

The Strategic Action Plan on Interregional Transmission, unveiled on April 28, lays the groundwork for an alternative model of interregional energy cooperation in which states shape the future of the grid.

It proposes a state-led governance framework for identifying, advancing and financing interregional transmission projects that serve public interest goals, not just market profits.

“Increased transmission capacity can provide consumer cost savings and reduce the need for fossil-fueled power plants that exist solely to meet peak demand,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement announcing the initiative. “This collaboration illustrates exactly why state-led action is so important.”

The strategic action plan identifies the so-called “missing middle” in grid planning: the absence of a process for states across regions to collaborate on interregional transmission projects. 

“No process currently exists for groups of states spanning different transmission planning regions to take the various steps necessary to identify, evaluate, select, and agree to share the cost of beneficial interregional transmission projects so they can be developed,” the plan states. Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey fall in the territory of PJM Interconnection, while the New England states have a separate grid operator, ISO-New England, and New York has its own independent system operator. 

The current structure creates a “triple hurdle,” according to the plan, requiring potential interregional projects to be approved separately by each planning region and again in a joint evaluation, making it nearly impossible for beneficial projects to advance.

To fill that vacuum, the states plan to launch a coordinated Request for Information to identify “low-regrets” transmission projects that can deliver immediate reliability and clean energy benefits. The plan also identifies transmission equipment standardization as a key to reducing the cost of transmission development.

A new cost allocation framework will prioritize emissions reductions and consumer savings over legacy utility preferences. Additionally, the alliance intends to create a multi-state equipment procurement pool to lower costs and accelerate deployment of critical grid infrastructure. 

The multi-state effort follows years of wrangling between some states, including Maryland, and PJM, the region’s biggest grid operator. 

In recent months, Moore joined the governors of Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey in demanding that PJM reform its interconnection queue, where hundreds of clean energy projects have been stuck for years. These delays have stalled critical renewable infrastructure the states needed to meet legally binding climate targets, the governors argue.

Meanwhile, residential customers were hit with a rate surge last year after PJM’s 2025/26 capacity auction sent costs soaring from $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion in a single year. State officials blamed flawed auction rules and PJM’s exclusion of two Baltimore plants from the energy pool.

The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, the state’s consumer watchdog agency, recently filed two major legal challenges against PJM at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. 

Pennsylvania separately mounted legal action, with Gov. Josh Shapiro calling PJM’s capacity market “unjust and unreasonable” and warning that the auction’s design threatens to impose “astronomical costs that will not produce a commensurate benefit” for consumers across the region.

Experts say continuing frictions like these, coupled with a lack of a system for interregional energy cooperation, provided impetus for states to come up with an arrangement to secure their energy goals and protect ratepayers.  

“The states have come to realize that all of these decisions that PJM makes around transmission, investment, capacity markets and the costs associated with them ultimately get passed on to consumers in their states,” said Jon Gordon of Advanced Energy United, an industry association. “The states are fed up with being handed the bill for flawed market designs.”