BALTIMORE (WBFF) — As lawmakers debate energy solutions, data from PJM, the regional grid operator, shows most of the new projects ready to be constructed are solar projects.

A PJM spokesperson said that of the projects that could be constructed today, a total of 46 gigawatts, 27.8 gigawatts are solar. 5.6 gigawatts are wind, 4.1 gigawatts are storage projects, another 2.9 gigawatts are renewable hybrid projects and 5.9 gigawatts are natural gas projects.

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Other projects that are still being considered, studied or are in the agreement process followed that same trend, with the largest number of potential gigawatts wrapped up into solar projects.

“From a PJM perspective, you heard me on a number of occasions this morning talk about the 67 gigawatts of generation interconnection projects that have either signed or offered interconnection agreements. The vast majority of those projects are solar,” said Stephen Bennett, who represented PJM at the hearing.

“This is a problem that a sixth grader can recognize,” Republican Delegate Brian Chisholm said. “We are methodically and systematically diminishing supply as demand increases, and we’re doing that in the name of some green goddess of energy that cannot replace the energy we’re taking offline.”

State Republican lawmakers participated in a joint hearing in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Tuesday. They were joined by lawmakers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia – other states part of the PJM region. Lawmakers in those states also voiced concerns about a growing energy crisis, a lack of energy generation and rising energy bills.

“We have to work on making our state more friendly and more attractive to the data centers and power producers, because right now, we’re just pushing people out at such an enormous scale that we can’t replace the energy we’re losing,” Del. Chisholm said.

Over the years, several power plants in Maryland have closed, and Brandon Shores and Wagner are set to retire in the future.

“We also saw an increase in generation units that were retiring due to federal and state policy, the units that were coming on to replace those retirements, we saw two challenges. One, they were not coming on fast enough,” Bennett said.

State Republicans blamed Maryland’s climate goals and clean energy policies, an argument Democrats in the state have disagreed with. Instead of focusing on coal-plants, they have cited the need for an “all of the above” approach, which includes nuclear energy.

“We need more electrons on the wire, and we do. I don’t care what flavor it is,” Chisholm said. “The problem is, we keep getting promised all these things, and it’s all on paper.”

While PJM has acknowledged that have had issues with the “queue” and getting new projects on the grid, while they have been working to resolve those issues, another part of the problem is that the new energy replacing the retiring plants, doesn’t produce the same kind of power.

When it comes to solar energy, Bennett said, “from an energy perspective, there is value and we need it to happen, but we need it to happen, not as an ‘or,’ we need it to happen as an ‘and’ with resources that have high accreditation values as well.”

Sources of energy with higher accreditation values include nuclear energy and natural gas. It is a metric PJM uses to determine reliability, and how likely it is a resource will be available during peak times. Which means while the projects are important, there is also a need for other types of reliable energy. Bennett said resources of all kinds were needed on the grid sooner rather than later, in order to avoid grid reliability issues in the next few years.

Democratic leaders like Senate President Bill Ferguson have also discussed making nuclear energy a priority, and trying to speed up the timeline for those projects. Additionally, based on legislation that passed last session, other energy projects may also get expedited, however it is not yet clear how many projects will be impacted.