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If your power bills are getting higher and higher, you’re not alone. That’s probably little comfort, but here’s some proof anyway: Utilities requested or were granted a total of $29 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025, according to a study from advocacy group PowerLines. That’s more than double the total in the same period last year.
The biggest reason for these rising prices stems from the piece of the grid you can see from your window, as Heatmap reports. Utility poles and wires, also known as the distribution grid, shuttle power from high-voltage transmission infrastructure into homes and businesses. Over the last few years, building and maintaining these lines has become the biggest source of costs that utilities recoup via power bills, according to a December report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Natural disasters are also driving up expenses as they force utilities to repair and harden their grid for future weather events. California utilities, for instance, have to rebuild after wildfires and in some cases are spending even more money to underground lines. In the Southeast, utilities routinely look to raise rates to cover post-hurricane restoration costs.
Then there’s the fact that natural gas remains the U.S.’s dominant energy source and that prices for that fuel remain higher than they were over much of the last two years.
Now for the second big question: Will things get better anytime soon? Probably not, for a few reasons.
For starters, power demand is on the rise, stemming in large part from the construction of energy-hungry data centers. Tech giants plan to keep building facilities to run their AI operations, and how they’re powered — and how that demand is managed — could end up making everyone else’s electricity more expensive.
That demand could be largely satiated by new solar and wind farms, which are typically quicker and cheaper to stand up than fossil-fueled and especially nuclear power plants. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans passed in July will soon wipe out federal tax credits that incentivized clean energy construction.
Instead, the Trump administration is pushing to keep aging fossil-fuel power plants online past their retirement dates — a mission that could end up costing utility customers as much as $6 billion each year by the end of President Donald Trump’s term. A federal order that kept a Michigan coal plant open past its planned closure cost its operator $29 million in its first five weeks, and just this week the Energy Department reupped the facility’s extension until November.
Treasury rules tighten access to clean energy tax credits
The U.S. Treasury Department has released guidance that will make it harder to access wind and solar tax credits before their ultimate expiration, Canary Media’s Jeff St. John reports. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act gives wind and solar developers two options to tap the credits: They must either put their project in service by the end of 2027 or begin construction by July 2026. The Treasury’s new guidance narrows the federal government’s longstanding definition of what marks the start of construction.
Still, things could’ve been a lot worse, experts told Jeff — deadlines to finish work could’ve been accelerated, for example. And with these rules, developers have the clarity they’ve been waiting for to make decisions and get building.
USDA pulls support from solar, wind on farmland
Federal assistance for solar and wind power on farmland is fading. On Tuesday, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced that it will “no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA projects.” It will also render wind and solar projects ineligible for the agency’s Business and Industry loan program, and bar Rural Energy for America Program loans from being used for ground-mounted solar projects larger than 50 kW.
The Trump administration has already taken multiple shots at REAP, Canary Media’s Kari Lydersen reported in July, freezing nearly $1 billion in funding for farmers and closing a window for new applications before it even opened.
“Come to America and lose $1B”: Foreign offshore wind developers have faced steep financial losses over the past few years, and they’ve only intensified under the Trump administration’s anti-wind policies. (Canary Media)
Polluting the post: Republican U.S. senators move to strip federal funding for the U.S. Postal Service’s transition to an EV fleet to save taxpayer money, though industry observers say the move would have the opposite effect. (Associated Press)
Steel’s dangerous warning: Last week’s fatal explosion at Pennsylvania’s Clairton Coke Works underscores the urgent need to decarbonize the coal-reliant steelmaking industry. (Canary Media)
Solar still rises: The Energy Information Administration estimates the U.S. will add 33 gigawatts of solar power to the grid this year, amounting to half of all new generation brought online in 2025. (EIA)
A red flag for gas stoves: A new Colorado law will require gas stoves to come with labels that warn buyers about the carcinogens and pollution the appliances emit, though a lawsuit has delayed its implementation for now. (Canary Media)
Cruising to electrification: New York City debuts its first hybrid-electric ferry, which is making trips from Manhattan to an emerging climate-change research hub on Governors Island. (Canary Media)
Counting on cleanup: California advocates worry Phillips 66 may shirk its responsibilities to clean up a “lake of hydrocarbons” that has accumulated under a Los Angeles-area refinery slated for closure later this year. (Capital & Main)
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