Wire
Maryland can't police how power companies say 'green'
The Fourth Circuit said the state likely went too far by limiting words like “clean,” “eco-friendly” and “carbon-free” unless electricity met its renewable credit rules. It also questioned a separate disclosure mandate tied to green-power marketing.
Maryland consumers shopping for electricity still see the same thing on the page: promises that sound clean, simple and a little greener than the alternatives. A published Fourth Circuit ruling said the state likely went too far when it tried to police those words, giving suppliers new room to describe power backed by renewable energy credits, or RECs.
The case, Retail Energy Advancement League v. Anthony G. Brown, centers on whether regulators can block suppliers from calling electricity “clean,” “green,” “eco-friendly,” “environmentally friendly,” “carbon-free” or “100% renewable” unless the power met Maryland’s strict threshold.
The words that sell electricity
The challenged rule tied those labels to a numeric test. Suppliers could use the language only if their electricity was at least 51% renewable or backed by RECs from within the PJM region, the multistate grid that includes Maryland. RECs are the accounting tool states use when the electricity itself cannot be traced once it moves onto the grid.
The panel said the state did not show the banned terms were inherently misleading. That matters because the court treated the dispute as commercial speech, the kind of advertising speech that still gets First Amendment protection even when government says it is trying to protect consumers.
Why the challengers won ground
The challengers, Retail Energy Advancement League and Green Mountain Energy Company, persuaded the court that they were likely to succeed on their First Amendment claim even under intermediate scrutiny, the lower level of review that applies to commercial speech. The judges reversed part of the lower court’s ruling and sent the case back with instructions.
For electricity buyers, the practical effect is straightforward: Maryland may not be able to force suppliers into a narrower vocabulary just because regulators think some words sound too good to leave unchecked. The state still has tools against deception, but this ruling says it cannot assume familiar green language is misleading on its face.