From Alliance for a Green Economy’s Executive Director: “We used to see single-digit rate hikes and now we see double-digit rate hikes,” said Jessica Azulay, executive director of the advocacy group Alliance for a Green Economy. Since the pandemic, several utilities have requested increases of 25 percent or more to their delivery rates — and this year, as much as 39 percent. “That’s a new normal that is unacceptable,” Azulay said.
This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.
NEW YORK STATE · September 18, 2025
Why Your Energy Bills Are Going Up — Again
Electric bills in New York haven’t been this high for a decade, and they’re about to rise even more. Here’s why.
By Colin Kinniburgh , New York Focus
You may have noticed your energy bills going up recently. It’s not just you, and it’s about to get worse.
Electric bills in New York are the highest they’ve been in over a decade, even when taking inflation into account. More than a million households are at least two months behind on payments, owing utilities close to $2 billion. And record numbers of households had their electricity or gas shut off this spring, including more than 61,000 in May — the highest number the Public Utility Law Project (PULP), a decades-old consumer advocacy group, has ever seen.
Anxiety about unaffordable bills only mounted over the summer. Laurie Wheelock, PULP’s executive director, said this August was the group’s busiest month ever, with a surge in calls to its hotline. The top concern on people’s minds: rate hikes.
Utilities are successfully jacking up prices. At the same time, electricity demand is surging: New York, like many other states, is bringing new data centers, high-tech manufacturing, and other energy-hungry industries onto the grid, while also electrifying more home heating and transportation. And President Donald Trump’s onslaught of policies aimed at hindering renewables is only adding fuel to the fire.
Meanwhile, both the federal and state governments are eyeing deep cuts to assistance programs meant to help keep energy bills under control.
What’s behind the surging costs? Here’s what you need to know.
Utility Rate Hikes
Every energy bill in New York breaks down into two main parts: supply, which reflects the costs of producing the energy that you use, and delivery, which reflects what your local utility charges to get that energy to your home.
The delivery side is what’s mainly driven up bills over the last decade, and it’s still the fastest-growing part. It’s set through the state’s well worn “rate case” process: Utilities ask regulators for bill increases to cover their operating costs and pay for new infrastructure. After negotiations, the state’s Public Service Commission, or PSC, approves a compromise deal. Then rates go up, though usually by less than the utility had asked for.
In recent years, utilities have requested far bigger hikes.
“We used to see single-digit rate hikes and now we see double-digit rate hikes,” said Jessica Azulay, executive director of the advocacy group Alliance for a Green Economy. Since the pandemic, several utilities have requested increases of 25 percent or more to their delivery rates — and this year, as much as 39 percent. “That’s a new normal that is unacceptable,” Azulay said.
As of September, some 75 percent of the state’s electric customers and almost half of gas customers had rate hikes pending or recently approved. The latest proposals, from upstate utilities NYSEG and RG&E, would increase electric bills by $33 a month. NYSEG’s proposal would increase gas bills by the same amount — a whopping one-third increase. (Regulators are unlikely to approve the full requests.)
The companies said in July that the hikes were needed “to pay for rebuilding an aging grid and expanding its capacity to meet residents’ and businesses’ service demands,” including making repairs after storms. They said the plan would create more than 1,000 jobs.
PSC spokesperson James Denn said the hikes that the commission approves owe largely to factors outside the state’s control.
Much of New York’s utility infrastructure is getting too old to operate efficiently and safely, and is in urgent need of upgrading. But the cost of those upgrades has spiked “due to inflation, higher interest rates, supply chain disruptions, the global push to upgrade electrical infrastructure, and, most recently, the rising risk and uncertainty from tariffs,” Denn said.
Many have blamed New York’s clean energy efforts for the hikes, but official estimates suggest they remain a minor factor. A long-awaited PSC report presented on Thursday found that state climate policies accounted for anywhere from 5 to 9.5 percent of the average household’s electric bill in 2024, or $10 to $12 per month, depending on the utility. (The impact on gas bills was far smaller, at 2 percent or less.)
Those costs straddle both the supply and delivery sides of the bill. They include transmission upgrades aimed at greening the grid, utility programs to switch households to electric appliances like heat pumps, and subsidies for renewable and nuclear energy statewide, among other expenses.
Those expenses are still outweighed by more traditional utility spending. The companies are investing heavily to harden their infrastructure against extreme weather — adapting in part to the impacts of climate change, as efforts to slow it fall ever further behind target. They’re still pouring billions into maintaining and expanding local gas systems, even as homes and businesses use less of the fuel. They’re also hiring more staff, paying higher property taxes, and confronting equipment shortages. The amount New Yorkers are shelling out for the energy transition still looks small by comparison.
Energy Supply Costs Also Growing
The cost of producing energy in the first place is getting more expensive, too — and Trump’s policies could push it up higher.
Trump’s multi-pronged attack on renewables has jeopardized the kinds of energy projects that, in states like New York, are the closest to being built. That’s stifling new supply to the grid, even as demand surges, and increasing reliance on gas.
Under Trump’s July megabill, solar and wind projects will lose a longstanding 30 percent federal tax credit unless they begin construction by mid-2026 or complete it by the end of 2027. That alone will make them more expensive to build. But Trump has also thrown up a slew of other new hurdles to renewable development, rewriting everything from tax rules to bird conservation laws in ways that will make investments riskier, at best. That, too, will come at a cost, experts say.
Tariffs, and the constant threat that they will be increased, add another layer of expense and uncertainty.
Trump’s policy changes will cost New York $60 billion in renewable energy investment, the state estimates.
All told, Trump’s policies will likely kill a large share of wind and solar projects, particularly in states like New York, where new energy is already challenging and pricey to build. The state Department of Public Service — the agency working alongside the PSC — estimates that the full gamut of Trump’s policy changes will cost New York $60 billion in renewable energy investment.
Developers remain bullish that some projects will survive, but they will come at a premium.
“It just means more expensive power,” said Marguerite Wells, executive director of the renewable energy lobbying group Alliance for Clean Energy New York.
Less renewable energy means even greater reliance on gas, which already supplies roughly half of New York’s electricity, and close to two-thirds of its home heating. With fewer alternatives coming onto the grid than expected, New York’s energy markets will likely be hitched to the fuel for years to come.
That means they will also be increasingly tethered to global markets. The US’s gas export capacity is set to more than double by 2028 and continue growing from there, a policy Trump has championed — and a key reason that the US Energy Information Administration expects gas prices to climb sharply again this year after dropping to a historic low in 2024.
The more gas the US sells around the world, the more vulnerable domestic consumers will be to price shocks driven by geopolitical events like Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, said Dennis Wamsted, an analyst at the pro-renewable Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
“In some ways you can’t fault the exporters for passing along those costs,” Wamsted said. “But it does raise the very real question of, what kind of risk are we putting rate payers at or consumers at going forward… if we become more reliant on gas-fired electricity generation?”
The Trump administration has offered a straightforward answer: “drill, baby, drill,” and supply will outpace growing demand to keep prices down.
“Joe Biden’s Green New Scam agenda crushed America’s energy industry with stifling regulations, causing electricity prices to soar by more than 30 percent in just four years,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers in an emailed statement. “Beginning on Day One, President Trump began rolling back these policies and unleashed American energy to lower costs for families and businesses.”
Trump’s most direct foray into New York energy politics has been pressuring Governor Kathy Hochul to revive two controversial pipeline projects that the state previously rejected. Backers of the two pipelines argue that they will save consumers money by increasing energy supply to the region.
Some analysts have challenged that claim, pointing to the substantial up-front construction costs. The utility National Grid estimates its downstate gas customers will pay an extra $7.50 per month, on average, to build the NESE pipeline, in exchange for cheaper electricity statewide. A recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis suggests the utility is likely underestimating the upfront costs and exaggerating the savings.
On Thursday, the PSC endorsed the pipeline in an order approving National Grid’s long-term gas plan for New York, saying it was needed for reliability. The pipeline still needs environmental permits from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Even if Trump and his allies succeed in bringing more gas to the northeast, it may only offer a stopgap to the state’s strained energy system. Roughly a quarter of New York’s fossil fuel plants are reaching retirement age in the next few years, according to the state’s grid operator, and numerous hurdles stand in the way of replacing them.
One of the biggest is the supply chain. Wait times for the central component of gas plants — turbines — are as long as seven years.
Moreover, in New York — which is targeting a zero-emissions grid by 2040 — there is not a single new gas plant currently on the table. Even if the state government were to reverse course and begin approving them again, such plants would likely take years to plan, permit, and build.
“Those constraints don’t go away by making it harder to build renewables now,” said Julia Hoos, Head of USA East at the firm Aurora Energy Research; under Trump’s policies, it just becomes harder to build energy in general. Those kinds of supply constraints could contribute to rising costs.
What Is to Be Done?
Energy bills are a political flashpoint, and Hochul called affordability “our greatest short-term challenge” in a February letter assailing ConEd’s proposed hikes. But critics charge that the governor is making the problem worse by cutting a key program to help New Yorkers fix up their homes and cut their bills.
The Empower+ cuts come as the state’s new draft energy plan highlights energy efficiency as a key way to rein in costs and improve quality of life for low- and moderate-income households. “The prospect of massive funding cuts for that program … goes against what the state’s own analysis says needs to happen to help bring down energy bills for households,” said Azulay.
Asked about her record on energy affordability, Hochul’s office touted $1.4 billion in utility bill savings, mainly delivered through Covid-era bailouts; support for rooftop and community solar; and the state’s recent expansion of the Energy Affordability Program, which will give more moderate-income households access to monthly bill discounts funded by utility customers as a whole.
“At a time when the federal government has waged war on renewable energy, the Governor is focused on a all-of-the-above approach to energy to increase supply and drive costs down,” Hochul spokesperson Ken Lovett said in an email.
Some lawmakers are seeking structural reforms to rein in utility profits. The PSC already sets the profit rates that utilities are allowed to earn on their investments; Denn, the spokesperson, said that recent increases were a product of post-pandemic inflation, and that New York keeps utility shareholder returns well below the national average. But critics have argued that state regulators are granting rates far higher than market conditions warrant, allowing utility shareholders to line their pockets at customers’ expense.
A New York bill sponsored by Senator Shelley Mayer and Assemblymember Didi Barrett aims to shave those profits by revamping the accounting that the PSC uses to set them. The bill has passed the Senate three times with bipartisan support, but has yet to gain traction in the Assembly. Hochul hasn’t taken a position on it.
Watchdogs say there are more savings to unlock in other technical aspects of the ratemaking process, known as “rate design.” The negotiations that decide them are close to impenetrable for non-experts, but mounting outrage is inspiring more New Yorkers to try and crack open the process.
“There is definitely a groundswell of concern,” said PULP’s Wheelock. “We go to meetings and we’re getting questions about rate design, like, ‘What is the revenue decoupling mechanism?’ Never had that question before.”
Correction: September 23, 2025 — This article previously misspelled state Senator Shelley Mayer’s name.