Since Governor Martin O’Malley assumed office in January 2007, Maryland residents’ electricity rates have increased by 43 percent, according to estimates from Change Maryland, a group chaired by Larry Hogan, a Republican who intends to run for governor. In comparison, electricity costs have risen 24 percent nationwide.

Richard Doran, program director of the Fuel Fund of Maryland says, at least 500,000 state residents are struggling to pay their utility bills. And Children’s HealthWatch, which provides nonpartisan policy analysis, reported in 2011 that 15 percent of Baltimore residents had been threatened with a shutoff and that an additional 18 percent were heating their homes with a cooking stove, had experienced a shutoff, or lived in an unheated home.

Of course, no one mentions that O’Malley’s ambitious green policy has an outsize and detrimental impact on the state’s most economically vulnerable residents. But as a long, cold winter settles in, O’Malley would do well to consider the human cost of his environmental agenda.

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