Solar

Maryland Senate president takes job with solar energy company

Maryland Senate president takes job with solar energy company
Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and Sen. Sarah K. Elfreth (D-Anne Arundel), right, using protective glasses to look at the partial solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Now Ferguson is working for a company that harnesses the sun for renewable energy. Photo by Danielle J. Brown.

by Josh Kurtz, Maryland Matters

Over the past several decades, the presiding officers in the Maryland General Assembly have either been lawyers, business owners or longtime local government employees.

So it seems significant that Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) has just taken a job as general counsel and senior vice president with a renewable energy company.

It’s an important development for Ferguson personally and professionally, of course — but it also seems to subtly and indirectly elevate renewable energy as a policy priority in Annapolis. And it highlights the challenges members of Maryland’s “citizen legislature” can face trying to earn a living.

Ferguson is joining CI Renewables, a Baltimore-based solar energy firm with about a dozen employees. Ferguson said that as the company’s general counsel, he’ll be mostly focused on “transactional work,” rather than lobbying or making policy decisions.

“It’s exciting,” he said in an interview. “I feel like I’m back in law school a bit. I’m trying to tap into my commercial law and contract law classes from 14 years ago.”

But Ferguson said he is fully on board with the company’s mission and eager to help CI Renewables fulfill its potential.

Founded in 2010 and originally based in New Jersey, the company develops, owns and operates commercial and industrial-scale solar power generating installations throughout the mid-Atlantic. As the company’s projects in Maryland mounted, CI executives, who had Maryland roots, migrated the corporate operations to Baltimore two years ago.

A few years back, the company won a 25-year contract with a five-year option to help Howard County government dramatically expand its use of solar energy, at county-owned facilities and on agricultural properties (“agrivoltaics,” the installation of solar arrays on farmland, is one of CI Renewables’ specialties).

This year, the company signed contracts with the University of Maryland, Baltimore to put up solar installations on top of two garages on campus, and with the University of Maryland Medical System to install solar arrays at three hospital garages across the state.

For Ferguson, these projects align with his own vision of how to reduce carbon emissions and promote clean energy in Maryland while also expanding opportunities for renewable-energy jobs.

Since passage of the Climate Solutions Now law in 2022, “I’ve really been trying to focus on how the energy transition can happen,” he said. “It’s become a passion. I think climate change is an existential threat and figuring out how to respond and transition quickly is essential.”

Ferguson said the CI Renewables executive team is going through a generational transition and that he’ll be able to learn his new duties from the outgoing general counsel, who plans to retire next year.

The company’s leadership team includes one other familiar name in Maryland policy and political circles — Joshua Feldmark, the former director of community sustainability for the Howard County government who is now a senior vice president at CI Renewables. An artist’s rendering of a proposed solar array on top of a garage at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. CI Renewables photo.

In a recent social media post, Feldmark, a longtime environmentalist and progressive activist and the husband of state Del. Jessica Feldmark (D-Howard), welcomed Ferguson to the team.

“Excited to have another wonk in a sea of engineers,” he wrote.

And while he’s not officially part of the corporate family, former Allegany County Commissioner Jake Shade (R) serves as a strategic joint development partner with CI Renewables, and is helping the company scout out business opportunities in Western Maryland.

Like most of the 188 members of the General Assembly, Ferguson has struggled at times to balance his legislative duties with his professional career.

Shortly after his election to the state Senate in 2010, he served for eight years as director of reform initiatives at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education (Hopkins is a frequent refuge for current and former elected officials), a gig that came to an end around the time Ferguson was taking over as Senate president at the beginning of 2020 — a development that preceded the pandemic by mere weeks.

While juggling his new duties in the legislature and the dual public health and economic crises caused by COVID-19, Ferguson became a program director at America Achieves, a national nonprofit that promotes economic opportunity. But the CI Renewables job is a more permanent arrangement.

Ferguson concedes that the process of figuring out how to earn a living while remaining in the legislature and eventually landing with the solar energy company took quite some time.

“I had lots and lots and lots of conversations with people to find out what will work,” he said.

Just this year the legislature passed a measure called the Brighter Tomorrow Act, which requires state agencies to set standards to encourage more solar developments on rooftops and other properties, and also provides greater tax incentives for solar installations. The projects that will be enhanced by that new law, which is taking effect incrementally over the next several months, will generally be smaller than those that CI Renewables routinely works on.

Ferguson said he doesn’t anticipate having to excuse himself from most legislative debates on energy and climate legislation as a result of his new job, even as lawmakers scramble to figure out how to meet the aggressive carbon reduction and renewable energy goals laid out in the Climate Solutions Now law.

“I really homed in on trying to find where I could use my skills and make a difference,” he said. “Three weeks in, it feels like a really good fit.”

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected]. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and X.