SILVER SPRING, Md. — Millions of dollars are flowing into two Maryland counties as a result of the Pepco-Exelon merger.
“Pepco and Exelon recently contributed $25 million to Prince George’s and Montgomery counties as part of our merger commitments,” Pepco President and CEO Dave Velazquez announced Thursday at a news conference in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The money will go toward promoting investment in areas like solar energy, clean transportation and retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient.
Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker described other ways the money will be used: “A program to help our workforce development … and that is the next generation of jobs that are going to be created. So we’re very pleased with that.”
Baker said some of the money will also help expand his county’s summer youth program so more kids can take part.
“All of these things come as a result of this particular merger. It’ll help us not only now, but way into the foreseeable future,” said Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett.
The $25 million is the first of what will be several annual payments to both counties.
Altogether, Pepco customers in Maryland have been promised a total of $133 million worth of benefits.
“Maryland residential customers already received the first of two $50 bill credits that they will receive. And also the company has canceled past due amounts that were more than two years old for all … Maryland residential customers as part of the merger,” Velazquez said.
Leggett emphasized that the “real essence and benefit” of the merger is that it will reduce outages.
Exelon owns about two dozen nuclear power plants, but now that such plants are no longer competitive and there are cheaper ways to make power, Velazquez was asked if Pepco customers will be protected in case Exelon has financial trouble.
“Pepco is completely protected against the rest of Exelon’s businesses,” he said. “There are very stringent what are called ‘ringfencing provisions’ that prevent anything that happens in the rest of Exelon’s business from coming and affecting Pepco. The merger agreement is very clear on that.”
