The Battle Lines over the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP)
The fight over transmitting bulk power across Maryland into Northern Virginia is centered around the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP).
This 500-kilovolt (500 kV), 67-mile high-voltage transmission line is designed to carve out a massive new 200-foot-wide right-of-way directly through Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick Counties.
The Maryland Story: "All Loss, No Gain"
From Maryland’s perspective, the MPRP is widely viewed across party lines as an extractive pipeline. The state's power dynamics can be summarized by three key factors:
Who Makes the Money? Constellation Energy and power generators in Pennsylvania make the money selling nuclear and baseload electricity (including power from the restarted Crane Clean Energy Center at Three Mile Island).
Who Gets the Tax Revenue? Loudoun County, Virginia, and northern Virginia municipalities reap billions in corporate tax revenues, economic growth, and tech investment from major data center campuses.
What Does Maryland Get? Maryland gets none of the data center tax revenue, does not own the power generation, and faces hundreds of eminent domain claims that threaten preserved family farmland, lower property values, and fragment rural ecosystems.
Maryland’s independent consumer advocate, the Office of People’s Counsel (OPC), and grassroots coalitions argue that Maryland residents are effectively being forced to subsidize the transmission infrastructure necessary to power tech behemoths in Virginia.
