A not-so-glowing attribute of American democracy is the ability of voters to act shocked and blame whoever is in charge when things don’t go well. So, it makes twisted sense that, as 2026 approaches, the Trump administration should pay the political price for bad energy policies inherited from the Biden administration and Democratic governors.
Years of flat energy demand and relatively stable electricity prices dulled Americans’ understanding of energy economics. Now, new data center demand, the end of cheap natural gas, and President Biden’s policy of replacing baseload nuclear and coal power with wind and solar have screwed up electricity price signals enough to shred household budgets and stun homeowners — just in time for a colder-than-average winter.
The numbers are as stark as a slate-grey November sky. Household spending on electricity for heating is expected to rise 10% this winter to more than $1,200. Utilities requested a $29 billion rate increase in the first half of 2025, double last year’s rate rise. Residential electricity rates rose 6.6% year-on-year as of June 2025, according to Utility Dive, after already rising nearly 30% between 2021 and 2024.
The causes of these electricity increases are multifaceted, yet, as a policy brief from the National Center for Energy Analytics reveals, subsidies to wind and solar are major culprits. Subsidies like the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) distort electricity markets by artificially lowering prices, sometimes into negative territory, forcing otherwise competitive but unsubsidized generation out of the market.
Interestingly, the study found that the argument that increasing demand from the data center buildout is causing increases in average rates is not supported by the facts. The state of Virginia has built the large majority of data centers in the past 2 years, yet Virginia’s ratepayers have experienced below-average price gains and still pay below-average electricity rates.
The Big Beautiful Bill, passed by Congress in July, partially solved some of these market-signal problems by accelerating the phase-out of wind and solar projects to the end of 2027, but that fact can’t heat the homes of families making hard choices every day during the winter of 2025-26.
An extra hundred dollars a month over winter means no sports or academic camps in summer for teenagers. Fifty dollars a month can be the difference between seeking mental health counseling or fighting clinical depression alone. Energy prices don’t play games.
In places like Massachusetts and California where green-energy policy has gone too far, the pain is both real and self-inflicted, raising the question of why voters continue to elect Democrats who prefer self-actualization to public service.
Residential electricity prices in California rose 125% in the last 15 years as subsidies for renewables pushed out existing nuclear and natural gas, all with the support of their ravishing Governor, Gavin Newsom.
In Massachusetts, politicians like Governor Maura Healey show us that grown-ups can still be childish. She and other (nearly all Democrat) politicians in New England don’t want any new pipelines to ship natural gas from the super-cheap Marcellus Shale Formation in Pennsylvania, lest they offend climate-change sensibilities.
Instead, they imported LNG from 3,000 miles away in Norway, which averaged more than $12 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) between January and March 2024. Meanwhile, average realized sales prices for Marcellus shale gas, less than 150 miles away during the same period, were between $2.10 and $2.20 per Mcf, only one-sixth the price. Not very smart.
As a result, both states, perhaps taking their cues from the grade-inflating Harvard and Stanford Universities within their borders, now have the highest electricity rates in the country, over 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Nice job, Einsteins.
Leaving the energy policy equivalent of a flaming paper bag of poo on the front porch for the Trump administration to stomp out may be good politics for Democrat governors. Still, if the United States is going to win the future, we have to get away from the energy hunger games and put in place permanent policies that a subsequent White House occupant won’t overturned.
And some states do their energy policies better, and not just carbon rich states like Texas or Kentucky that have some geologic largesse. States like Indiana, which imports energy from other states, have slowed coalretirements through legislative action, passing laws requiring utilities to demonstrate grid reliability before replacing coal with renewables.
Even Democrat-run states like Illinois have resisted closing base load nuclear plants despite political pressure from net-zero and anti-nuclear groups.
And some states are doing even more. Republican governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana has signed sweeping legislation aimed at reducing energy costs and unleashing energy affordability to its rate payers across the states and countries that it feeds.
And on the federal level, Congressman Troy Balderson is trying to make Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security the federal standard. If you want to set into law energy sanity that will survive, states need to follow leaders like Governor Landry. And if we as a country have any brains left in our screen-addled heads, we have to put Balderson’s ARC ES bill on the president’s desk to sign.
Energy production should be a kitchen-table issue, but with a longer lead time than the current election cycle. We should be able to pay less to get more. The Trump administration is doing more in that regard than any administration in history. Opening Alaska, easing leasing restrictions on federal land, and cutting subsidies for EVs and renewables are nice. In the meantime, states and the federal government must step up.
In the end, we’re all worm food, but until then, people — especially Americans facing the winter season — have things to do, dreams to achieve, and go places where futures can thrive.
Here’s to a more affordable 2026.
William Murray is a former chief speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the past editor of RealClearEnergy from 2015-2017, and has covered energy and environmental policy in Washington D.C., as a journalist and analyst for the past two decades.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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What a coincidence…
increasing demand from the data center buildout
Hydrogen or a data centre?
Ed Miliband humiliated by BP decision in major blow to Labour’s Net Zero
BP has revoked its application altogether
…
South Tees Group (STG), sought permission to build a massive AI data centre there instead.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2141037/ed-miliband-bp-net-zero-teeside#
Why are courts allowed to protect the climate fraudster politicians and governors? This is quite a simple matter for a forensic accountant to expose. One does not need a rocket scientist to figure this out and most certainly not a self identified “climate scientist.”
To take that protection further, might questioning those fraudster politicians and governors, especially online, become a thought crime?
Don’t joke, these chancers could easily implement such laws.
Ok. Being a rocket scientist with a CPA wife and a forensic accountant daughter, I can confirm your point. However, a rocket scientist does know math and a few basics from a CPA wife gives him the necessary vision to do accounting. Likewise a few pointers from the husband gives the wife the necessary vision to do rocket science.
There are no degrees offered, that I have found to date, in climate science. The spectrum of science and engineering disciplines one needs to be competent in “climate science” would take more than one lifetime to master.
The problems in the courts are lawyers willing to go to whatever means needed to get their 5% to 50% of the awards and the USA has lots of lawyers.
Judges are either politicians (elected) or lawyers. They will not accept a cost accounting analysis as evidence without a certified expert opinion and often will disqualify such an expert based on legal arguments.
If justice were truly blind, as it is supposed to be, your suggestion would work.
From the article: “Interestingly, the study found that the argument that increasing demand from the data center buildout is causing increases in average rates is not supported by the facts.”
I’m glad you included this item.
We hear a lot of people claiming Data Centers are causing electricity prices to go higher but this can’t be true, especially nationwide, because Data Centers are just now being constructed so they are not making unusual demands on the electrical system now, and hopefully, they will follow Trump’s direction and build their own electrical generating facilities to run their Data Centers and pay for it themselves, so the public does not have to pay for it.
The reason for increased electricity prices is simple: The addition of windmills and industrial solar to the grid; the retirement of perfectly good coal plants from the grid, and the special pricing that has to be installed (ratepayer/taxpayer subsidies) in order for windmills and solar to be economically viable for their owners.
Windmills and Industrial Solar added to the grid are also the reason we get frequent blackout warnings from all the grids in the United States.
Before the United States added windmills and solar to the grid, we never had System Operators warning us about blackouts. Now, we have them every summer and winter.
Windmills and Industrial Solar are not fit for purpose. Making them so, costs a LOT of money for everyone including the poorest among us.
And there is no evidence that we need to reduce CO2 in the first place. All this economic pain is based solely on speculation and unsubstantiated assumptions about CO2. There is not one shred of evidence showing that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth. Not one shred. Yet our Net Zero leaders act like they know what they are doing. They don’t. They are shooting in the dark, and wounding all of us in the process.
Well said.
While net zero policies are the single and biggest factor in rising prices, there are others, lesser that they be. Aging infrastructure and population growth also contribute, but are minor contributors to the prices increases.
The point? There is no single “control knob.”
Instead, they imported LNG from 3,000 miles away in Norway
Are they following Ed Miliband’s climate leadership? He’s closing down the North Sea and associated fossil fuelled exploits in favour of importing LNG from…
Largest supplier Norway (Don’t we, er, share the North sea?)
Next largest… The USA
https://www.sunsave.energy/blog/uk-gas-sources
It’s all about appearing to have clean virtuous hands – and letting others get their hands dirty.
Hopeful for the US. Most western nations are still stubbornly headed in the wrong direction.
“An extra hundred dollars a month over winter means no sports or academic camps in summer for teenagers. Fifty dollars a month can be the difference between seeking mental health counseling or fighting clinical depression alone.”
Such pronouncements are a bit too much. Many families have multiple cell phones, streaming services, on-line games, spend on lottery tickets, “happy meals”, pizza, and drink lots of beer. Meanwhile, there is help for those that need food and help with the heating bills. Washington State offers assistance with heating bills through programs such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the State Home Energy Assistance Program (SHEAP). Locally, my provider has a program called Helping Hands.
“Such pronouncements are a bit too much.”
I agree it can be viewed as sensationalizing or, perhaps, merely emotionalizing the issue, something we complain the media does consistently.
However the context was established in the previous paragraph and it was not intended to be universal. The paragraph you are quoting applies to:
“families making hard choices every day”
Consider:
Many families (unquantified) do have this, that, and the other (as you wrote).
Many families (unquantified) do not.
Many families (unquantified) do not live paycheck to paycheck. Many do.
Many families (unquantified) have no income.
Many families (unquantified) have more than one wage earner or someone working 2 or more jobs to make ends meet.
It’s a spectrum. The unanswered question is how many families will have to make legitimate sacrifices to stay financially solvent? What percentage and for how long?
I am all in on local and county and State assistance programs, but with a caution. The supply of money is not infinite. Tax dollars and charitable contributions cover the costs today. If/when the economic squeeze worsens, there will be smaller funding pools for those assistance programs.
With the debt on the US being what it is and apparently with insufficient braking (on spending), it seems more and more likely the economic squeeze will be seen and not in some far off future.
That said, the local and county and State operations are much more efficient and should be favored over the Government throwing tax dollars in the wind and hoping some stick.
Social justice should not be making reparations or making people financially dependent or charity or assistance program. Social justice should be about making charities and assistance programs unneeded and families self-sufficient. Reducing energy costs is a necessary step.
I agree. All good ideas.
In my state of Wyoming we are literally walking on coal, coal that can be burned cleanly and that is cheap. It is a CRIME to not use coal. Coal was once the sine qua non of the modern world. We are discarding it for foolish and superstitious reasons.
Let me simplify this for you. Take away government mandates, government preferences, government subsidies, government tax preferences, unreasonable government regulations, government forcing some outfits out of business (think coal). Get rid of the government interference and we would almost certainly have a stable, clean, safe and affordable energy supply. It is past time to quit squabbling amongst our selves and straighten out our crappy government.
Story tip
https://coloradosun.com/2025/12/02/colorado-natural-gas-emissions-caps-xcel/
Colorado’s governor is full on drinking the Kool-aid