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More Americans Fall Behind on Utility Bills as AI Data Centers, Trump Attacks on Renewables Raise Costs
"It’s hard to see utility bills coming down in this decade," said one industry analyst.
Nov 17, 2025
Although the rising cost of groceries has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks, US consumers are also increasingly under pressure from the rising cost of electricity.
A new report from researchers at The Century Foundation and financial abuse watchdog Protect Borrowers has found that the average overdue balance on utility bills has surged by 32% over the last three years, going from $597 in 2022 to $789 in 2025. What's more, the report estimates that roughly 1 out of every 20 US households has utility debt that is "so severe it was sent to collections or in arrears."
The increase in overdue utility bill debt has come at a time when electricity costs have been growing significantly faster than the overall rate of inflation, the organizations found.
"Comparing twelve-month moving averages from March 2022 to June 2025 (to adjust for seasonality), monthly energy costs... nationwide rose from $196 to $265—a 35% jump, or nearly three times overall inflation during that period," noted the report.
The organizations said that the reasons for these price increases are complicated, although factors include "poorly regulated monopolies overcharging customers to the tune of $5 billion a year," as well as the explosion in the construction of energy-devouring artificial intelligence data centers and the Trump administration's attacks on renewable energy projects that began under former President Joe Biden's administration.
AI data center construction has become a major controversy in communities across the US, and a CNBC analysis published late last week found that "in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers," electric bills have grown "much faster than the national average" over the last year.
Virginia, which has the highest concentration of AI data centers in the country, saw electricity prices surge by 13% over the last year, while data center-heavy states such as Illinois and Ohio saw electricity costs go up by 16% and 12%, respectively.
Rob Gramlich, president of power sector consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that the massive growth in data centers means that "it’s hard to see utility bills coming down in this decade."
The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers conclude that their report paints "a grim picture" of "increasing energy prices, rising overdue balances, and squeezed household budgets that together are pushing families deeper and deeper into debt."
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Mamdani’s Win and the Price of Urban Life: Why City Voters Are Seeking Change
The soaring costs of city life appear to be sending urban voters toward progressive leaders who promise relief, both in the US and globally.
Nov 06, 2025
From New York to California and beyond, soaring costs seem to be rewriting city politics, as voters respond to candidates who promise to ease the financial squeeze. Zohran Mamdani’s historic win in NYC underscores a shift that has been emerging in recent years—both in the US and globally—and could extend to other major cities.
For example, in Boston, progressive Democrat Michelle Wu, elected in 2021, ran on making city life more affordable with expanded tenant protections, investments in housing, and childcare support. Her most prominent challenger, Josh Kraft, son of Forbes 400 billionaire Robert Kraft, flamed out even before the election. Out west, Oakland’s progressive Democrat Barbara Lee, elected in 2025, focused on tackling homelessness and making housing and daycare more accessible for families. And in Chicago, democratic socialist Brandon Johnson, who took office in 2023, campaigned on “Green Social Housing” and other programs to lower living costs for working families.
Across these cities, the math is clear: When basic necessities like housing, childcare, and utility costs reach stratospheric levels, voters turn to leaders who offer solutions. These mayoral victories reflect the economic pressures impacting urban life and show why cost-of-living issues are now a defining feature of city politics.
Let’s take a look at how these four cities—New York, Boston, Oakland, and Chicago—stack up in terms of costs.
When a One-Bedroom Costs a Fortune
Across the US, if you’re renting a one‑bedroom apartment, you’re looking at spending about $1,495 a month as of October 2025.
But if you happen to live in one of the country’s pricier cities, that number skyrockets fast. In New York City, a simple one‑bedroom will set you back around $4,026 per month, almost three times the national average. Boston renters face similarly steep costs—one‑bedroom apartments in the city average about $3,455 per month. Over in Oakland, it’s about $2,090 per month, and Chicago clocks in at roughly $1,893 per month.
The point is clear: If you’re renting in America’s major cities, you’re paying beyond what most renters pay across the country, and that housing squeeze helps explain why affordability is a defining issue in urban politics right now.
When Daycare Drains Your Wallet
For parents juggling work and childcare, the national average cost of full-time daycare comes in at roughly $1,039 a month. In major cities where cost of living is high, that number climbs dramatically.
In New York City, center‑based care costs about $26,000 a year on average, which works out to about $2,167 per month. In Boston, families can expect rates around $2,856 per month for about 130 hours of care. In Oakland, the cost for full-day care for children above 36 months is approximately $2,600 per month in many centers. And in Chicago, estimates for full-day daycare center-based care hover in the ballpark of $2,300 per month.
It’s no surprise that voters in these cities are drawn to mayoral candidates who talk seriously about childcare. When daycare alone can eat up a significant portion of a family’s monthly budget, affordability quickly becomes a top political issue.
Basic Services Break the Budget
Nationally, households in the 50 largest metro areas spend about $310 a month on utilities (electricity, gas, heating, water). But in these cities, utility costs blow past the national average, adding another layer of financial pressure for residents.
In New York City, the average monthly utility bill comes in at roughly $571. Meanwhile, in Boston residents pay around $443 a month for utilities. In the Bay Area, the average bill in Oakland comes in at about $342 a month, which is lower than New York and Boston but still higher than in many parts of the country. Chicago households report average monthly utility bills of approximately $352.
Bottom line: If you live in one of those big‑city hubs, utility bills are another piece of the affordability puzzle that voters in these cities are increasingly factoring into who they elect to lead.
Affordability is the New Political Pulse
Rising prices are taking center stage in urban politics, affecting election outcomes and pointing to a growing trend in city governance. Mamdani’s upset in New York is already sending ripples across the country, giving a boost to candidates with progressive or democratic-socialist platforms.
In Minneapolis, state senator Omar Fateh, a progressive Democrat and longtime advocate for renter protections, ran for mayor on a platform focused on affordable housing and expanded public services. In Seattle, activist Katie Wilson, also aligned with the city’s progressive wing, is challenging incumbent Bruce Harrell, centering her campaign on housing, public transit, and the broader cost-of-living crunch.
And this trend isn’t just an American story:rising urban costs show up in political trends worldwide.
Consider Vienna, Austria. Mayor Michael Ludwig, a Social Democrat, has been at the helm since 2018, reinforcing the city’s storied social-housing tradition (which the New York Times called a “renter’s utopia”). Roughly 60% of residents live in subsidized or publicly-owned apartments, while the city continues to invest heavily in childcare and energy-efficient infrastructure. The result is a model of urban living where the cost of everyday life is more manageable.
Copenhagen, Denmark, under Mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen of the Social Democrats from 2021 to 2024, similarly emphasizes public housing, affordable early childhood education, and green-energy initiatives to keep city life manageable. And in Barcelona, Spain, Mayor Ada Colau of the leftist Barcelona en Comú party, led from 2015 to 2023, expanding affordable housing, rent controls, and social services.
The economy of the city is pretty much the politics of the city. Zohranomics is essentially urbanomics: the politics of affordability, writ large across city streets. In expensive urban areas, the numbers aren’t abstract, they’re votes. And as the pressures of urban life mount, politics increasingly follows the bottom line.
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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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