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electricity
'Another Trump Lie': Despite Campaign Pledges, Electricity Costs Up $100 Per Family
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the price increases will cost US families "an estimated $70 billion over the next three years."
Nov 06, 2025
As low-income households in northern states where the weather has already turned colder face the loss of heating assistance due to the government shutdown, a congressional report unveiled Thursday reveals that households across the country can expect to pay about $100 more this year in electricity costs than they did last year.
The report by Democratic members of the Joint Economic Committee—which includes Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)—emphasizes that the higher costs come a year after President Donald Trump won a second term in office after campaigning on ensuring families would pay less for groceries and energy if they elected him.
"Your energy bill within 12 months will be cut in half, and that’s my pledge all over the country," said Trump at a roundtable event in September 2024.
Contrary to that claim, the Democrats on the joint committee found that based on monthly electric bill data released by the Energy Information Administration for the first eight months of this year, annual costs for families will be at least 5% higher in 37 states and at least 10% higher in 10 states and Washington, DC.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) condemned "another Trump lie that's costing American families," and emphasized that the projected higher bills will force US households to spend "an estimated $70 billion over the next three years."
"That's why I'm pressing the Trump administration to actually stand up and do something to lower the electricity costs," said Warren.
Donald Trump promised to cut electricity costs in HALF by 2026.
But new data shows that electricity costs have actually gone UP by 11% since he took office.
Another Trump lie that's costing American families. pic.twitter.com/B2Ib14n88Y
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 6, 2025
Some of the worst-affected states include those with harsh winters in the northeast, including Maine, where people are projected to pay 12.5%, or $200, more for electricity this year. Massachusetts families will pay 12.4% ($250) more. In the Midwest, Illinois and Indiana will pay 15.2% ($200) and 16.3% ($260) more, respectively, while Washington, DC is the hardest hit by higher costs, with families expected to pay 22.1% ($300) more.
As CBS News reported in August, Trump has sought to blame higher electricity bills on renewable energy, but Rob Gramlich of energy consulting firm Grid Strategies said the higher demand and rising costs are being driven by "the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, oil and gas drilling, space heating, and electrified forms of transportation."
Trump has demanded an expansion of AI data centers, which can consume 30 times more electricity than traditional data centers and use as much power as 80,000 homes.
“While President Trump claimed he would cut electricity prices in half, in reality, Americans in almost every single state are facing higher electricity bills,” said Hassan, ranking member of the committee. “Democrats and Republicans should be working together to lower costs for families, but instead President Trump is continuing to push prices up even higher.”
The report was released two days after elections across the country that were favorable for Democrats. New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill won after campaigning on a promise to freeze utility rates in the state, while two Democrats in Georgia ousted Republicans on the state's Public Service Commission, which regulates utility prices.
The GOP commissioners had approved six rate increases over the past two years; the election marks the first time any Democrats have won a seat on the panel since 2007.
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6 Million Who Rely on Federal Heating Aid Poised to Suffer As Temps Drop and Trump Shutdown Drags On
If funding is not restored to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, said one expert, "pipes will freeze, people will die."
Nov 05, 2025
As more than 40 million households that rely on federal food aid are forced to stretch their budgets even further than usual due to the Trump administration only partially funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program under a court order, many of those families are facing another crisis brought on by the government shutdown: a loss of heating support that serves nearly 6 million people.
President Donald Trump has sought to eliminate the $4 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), proposing zero funding for it in his budget earlier this year and firing the team that administers the aid.
Though Congress was expected to fund the program in the spending bill that was supposed to pass by October 1, Democrats refused to join the Republican Party in approving government funding that would have allowed healthcare subsidies to expire and raised premiums for millions of families, and Trump and congressional Republicans have refused to negotiate to ensure Americans can afford healthcare.
The government shutdown is now the longest in US history due to the standoff, and energy assistance officials have joined Democratic lawmakers in warning that the freezing of LIHEAP funds could have dire consequences for households across the country as temperatures drop.
Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), told the Washington Post on Wednesday that even if the shutdown ended this week, funding would not reach states until early December—and more families will fall behind on their utility bills if lawmakers don't negotiate a plan to open the government soon.
“You can imagine in a state like Minnesota, it can get awfully cold in December. We’re all just kind of waiting, holding our breath.”
"People will fall through the cracks,” Wolfe told the Post. “Pipes will freeze, people will die.”
With heating costs rising faster than inflation, 1 in 6 households are behind on their energy bills, and 5.9 million rely on assistance through LIHEAP.
The Department of Health and Human Services generally released LIHEAP funds to states in the beginning of November, but energy assistance offices in states where the weather has already gotten colder have had to tell worried residents that there are no heating funds.
Officials in states including Vermont and Maine have said they can cover heating needs for families who rely on LIHEAP for a short period of time, and some nonprofit groups, like Aroostook County Action Program in northern Maine, have raised money to distribute to households.
But states and charities can't fill the need that LIHEAP has in past years. Minnesota's Energy Assistance Program received $125 million from the federal government last year that allowed 120,000 families to heat their homes.
Aroostook County Action Program has provided help to about 200 households in past years, while LIHEAP serves about 7,500 Maine families.
The state has already received 50,000 applications for heating aid and would be preparing to send $30 million in assistance in a normal year.
“You can imagine in a state like Minnesota, it can get awfully cold in December,” Michael Schmitz, director of the program, told the Post. “We’re all just kind of waiting, holding our breath.”
NEADA told state energy assistance officials late last month to plan on suspending service disconnections until federal LIHEAP funds are released, and US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) led more than four dozen lawmakers in urging utilities to suspend late penalties and shutoffs for federal workers who have been furloughed due to the shutdown.
States reported that they'd begun receiving calls from people who rely on LIHEAP as Americans across the country went to the polls on Tuesday and delivered Democratic victories in numerous state and local races.
The president himself said the shutdown played a "big role" in voters' clear dissatisfaction with the current state of the country.
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Make Polluters Pay for the Poles and Wires
The companies that made billions selling the fuels that destabilized the climate can afford to help fix the grid that’s collapsing under it.
Oct 29, 2025
We talk a lot about the cost of energy, but not enough about what’s actually driving it. Across the country, electricity bills are climbing not because of regulation, as the industry claims, but because of the growing costs of the climate crisis itself. The storms, the fires, the floods, and the heat are battering an electric grid that was mostly built half a century ago, and the costs of repairing it are being quietly folded into our monthly bills.
The other side wants you to believe it’s “climate” that’s driving up prices, and they’re right, just not in the way that they mean. It isn’t climate mandates or clean-energy standards. It’s climate disasters. And the truth is, the fastest way to lower costs isn’t to slow down the energy transition, it’s to speed it up. Clean energy brings cheap, reliable power online faster and protects families from the kind of fuel price spikes that come with oil and gas dependence.
That’s where climate superfund laws come in. New York and Vermont have already passed versions that require the biggest polluters to chip in for climate damage. These laws follow the same principle that governs toxic-waste cleanup. If you made the mess, you help pay to clean it up. States are starting to realize that the funds from a climate superfund could cover part of the cost of hardening the grid, things like replacing wooden poles with steel, elevating substations that flood every few years, building microgrids so hospitals and schools can stay open during blackouts, and funding new and more reliable clean energy projects. These projects would help to ease the pressure on ratepayers while making the systems themselves more resilient.
For years, utilities and regulators treated big storms as one-off emergencies. A few poles went down, they rebuilt them, everyone moved on. But the “one-off” has now become, dare I say, the “new normal.” In Maine, the cost of storm recovery has risen more than 30 fold since 2020. Every time a nor’easter slams through the state, Central Maine Power spends millions to replace equipment and clear lines, and then regulators approve a new rider or adjustment that gets added to customer bills. It’s the same story across the country.
The next time a storm knocks out your power or a bill arrives higher than expected, that’s the climate crisis arriving as a tab in your mailbox.
In California, billions have gone toward wildfire mitigation after blazes sparked by utility equipment destroyed entire towns. To prevent future fires, power companies are burying lines, trimming trees, insulating wires—all necessary, and all very, very expensive. According to state filings, utilities’ wildfire-related costs are contributing to 7-12% bill increases for residential customers. What began as infrequent emergency response spending has become a permanent part of doing business for utility companies across the country.
A new national analysis from the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council shows how big this problem has gotten. Utilities in 49 states and Washington, DC have already raised rates or proposed to raise within the next two years. By 2028, those hikes will add nearly $90 billion to household energy bills. That’s billions with a b. And for many families, that means another $30 or $40 a month on top of everything else they’re already struggling to afford.
The reasons are tangled together. The grid is old and failing faster under stress. The price of natural gas has spiked again, partly because exports of natural gas have linked American prices to volatile global markets. And new power-hungry data centers are popping up so quickly that utilities are scrambling to build the power plants to feed them. But one of the biggest single drivers remains extreme weather. Each storm and heatwave adds another layer of cost to a grid that was never built for this world.
The Government Accountability Office has warned that climate change will stress every part of the energy system and that failing to adapt will cost billions of dollars more in the long run. Yet the way we pay for that adaptation hasn’t changed at all. Utilities rebuild, regulators sign off, and the public pays. Fossil-fuel companies whose emissions are fueling the disasters that make all this necessary contribute all of nothing.
It’s tempting to think of this as just another utility issue, a problem for regulators and accountants and not us. But to me, it’s really a measure of how far the climate crisis has crept into our daily life. The next time a storm knocks out your power or a bill arrives higher than expected, that’s the climate crisis arriving as a tab in your mailbox. We can keep pretending it’s inevitable, or we can start sending the bill to the companies that profited from creating the problem.
Climate superfunds won’t solve everything. But they’d at least start to balance the scales. The companies that made billions selling the fuels that destabilized the climate can afford to help fix the grid that’s collapsing under it.
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