{"id":1253,"date":"2025-10-01T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2025-10-03T19:21:03","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T19:21:03","slug":"your-expensive-power-bill-is-part-of-an-alarming-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/01\/your-expensive-power-bill-is-part-of-an-alarming-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"Your expensive power bill is part of an alarming trend"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tElectricity prices keep inching up, and there\u2019s little reason to think they\u2019ll fall back down anytime soon.\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like most Americans this month, your most recent power bill may have given you a shock. Residential electricity rates have risen fast<\/a> across the US \u2014 more than 30 percent on average since 2020<\/a> and almost double the rate of inflation<\/a> in the past year \u2014 with no end in sight. <\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not great for anyone\u2019s budget, whether you\u2019re a renter or an industrialist. High electricity prices ripple beyond consumers and throughout the whole economy, disrupting manufacturing, construction, transportation, and more.<\/p>\n

And of course, electricity prices are a huge political issue. President Donald Trump campaigned on cutting energy prices<\/a> in half, and now that they\u2019re moving in the wrong direction, he has taken to blaming renewables<\/a>, the cheapest sources of new generation<\/a>, and promised $625 million to the ailing US coal industry<\/a>. Power bills are becoming a hot button in local politics, too<\/a>, like the New Jersey governor\u2019s race<\/a>, and you\u2019ll likely see them featured in more political ads.  <\/p>\n

Given how fast and how high electricity prices have jumped, just how worried should we be? Is this a crisis, something that\u2019s going to put more households in danger of getting their power shut off while driving up inflation and slowing growth? Or is this a return to normal after an era of unusually low prices? <\/p>\n

There are several dynamics driving the current power price spike<\/a>. Rising electricity demand, volatile fuel prices, inflation, tariffs, a slowdown in transmission line construction, and long delays in adding new generators to the power grid are all conspiring to create more expensive utility bills. And these variables aren\u2019t changing direction anytime soon, so unfortunately, your bills will likely rise further. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll of those factors are combining to create a scenario in which there could be long-lived year-over-year increases in electricity prices,\u201d said John Quigley<\/a>, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n

High electricity prices hit the poorest households the hardest since they spend a larger share of their money on their power bills. Power shutoffs due to nonpayment<\/a> were already rising at the beginning of the year. Close to 80 million Americans have to trade off between paying their electricity bills and other expenses<\/a> like health care and housing, and utilities are asking their regulators to raise rates further. \u201cTo a big segment of households \u2014 lower income-, even moderate-income households \u2014 it’s already a crisis,\u201d Quigley said. <\/p>\n

But there is some important context you have to consider, and some of the big picture trends are actually working to help us spend less<\/em> on energy and reduce our impact on the environment. How quickly this happens, though, will depend on policy decisions in the near term. <\/p>\n

One thing to keep in mind is that electricity is just one form of energy that you use. You may also have to pay for natural gas for heating and cooking, as well as gasoline for your sedan or pickup truck. But many American homes are electrifying, trading gas furnaces for more efficient heat pumps, gas burners for induction stoves, and V8 engines for electric motors. Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit think tank, dubbed this combined basket of household electricity and fuel spending the \u201cenergy wallet,\u201d using it as a way to track how these trends are changing over time while accounting for fuel switching. <\/p>\n

Last month, EPRI released a report<\/a> calculating that in 2024, the average annual US energy wallet spending was $5,530 per household. Gasoline was the largest slice of that pie, at $2,930 per household, while electricity was $1,850. Adjusting for inflation, overall<\/em> energy spending has actually held fairly steady since 2000. And prior to 2024, electricity spending was mostly level<\/a> as well. Perhaps it\u2019s more remarkable that overall energy spending was so stable for so long. <\/p>\n

Now, electricity prices are surging in addition to all of the uncorked demand from the Covid-19 pandemic, when the global economic slowdown and pressure from policymakers kept a lid on utility bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if we were to repeat this analysis for next year, there would probably be a little bit of an uptick this year, but the data that I’m looking at doesn’t suggest a really significant increase in the historical context,\u201d said Geoffrey Blanford, the lead author of EPRI\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

But there isn\u2019t just one story unfolding across the country. <\/p>\n

The US has a particularly chaotic energy system. How much people pay to light their homes, stay warm, and get around varies a lot from state to state, and even among neighbors. For example, Texas households tend to spend a larger share of their budgets on keeping their pickup trucks running, while families in Massachusetts spend a greater portion on staying warm. <\/p>\n

So, no \u2014 we\u2019re not in an energy crisis, but it\u2019s unlikely that your power bills will come down anytime soon. There is some good news though: In the years ahead, Americans are actually poised to spend a smaller share of their incomes on energy overall as technology makes it more cost-effective to shift away from fossil fuels. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn our forward-looking scenarios, one of the key drivers for change is electrification, particularly light-duty vehicles,\u201d Blanford said. \u201cThis tends to actually reduce the energy wallet in real terms per household over time even as you’re spending more on electricity.\u201d Though electric car sales have slowed down<\/a> in the US, they are still rolling into more driveways. And as homes and appliances become more efficient, that will help reduce energy bills as well. Based on current trends, the average US household energy wallet will shrink by 36 percent by 2050, with state-level declines anywhere from 10 to 50 percent, according to the report. <\/p>\n

Looking ahead to the upcoming winter, there are also things that policymakers can do to soften the blow of higher electricity rates for the most vulnerable families. One is to bolster initiatives like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program<\/a>, an initiative Trump wanted to eliminate<\/a>. Another is to impose generation requirements on major new power users like data centers<\/a> to run AI models so they aren\u2019t competing with households for existing electrons on the grid. \u201cThese data centers, which are kind of ground zero of all of the angst about increasing costs, they should be, without question, required to bring their own power,\u201d Quigley said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And there needs to be a major push to deploy more generation and upgrades to the power grid, particularly energy storage. Grid-scale batteries have seen breathtaking growth<\/a> in the past few years, but they\u2019re still a small segment of the energy mix. \u201cThere needs to be a huge push to foster battery deployment,\u201d Quigley said. \u201cThe quickest way to bring on new generation is to look at solar and storage.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still facing chaos in the energy industry, and the Trump administration isn\u2019t making things easy for utilities, power providers, and even the fossil fuel industry<\/a>. But we have many of the tools we need to manage higher utility prices, if we\u2019re willing to invest in them. For us normal people, the US Department of Energy recommends<\/a> tactics like conducting a home energy audit<\/a>, using energy-efficient appliances, installing double-pane windows, and sealing gaps in doors. <\/p>\n

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Electricity prices keep inching up, and there\u2019s little reason to think they\u2019ll fall back down anytime soon. Like most Americans this month, your most recent power bill may have given you a shock. Residential electricity rates have risen fast across the US \u2014 more than 30 percent on average since 2020 and almost double the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1256,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions\/1256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}