Electric and natural gas bills have been climbing in nearly every part of the country, and for retirees paying those bills out of a fixed Social Security check, the increases are no longer a rounding error. A tracker maintained by two nonpartisan research groups shows how widespread the pressure has become, tallying rate increases and rate-increase requests utility by utility, state by state. The scale is striking: tens of millions of households are affected, and the dollar total keeps climbing along with it.
The Tracker Behind the $93 Billion Figure
More than 111.5 million electric utility customers and nearly 55.5 million natural gas customers across 49 states and Washington, D.C. are covered by rate increases that utilities have already put into effect, had approved by regulators, or are actively requesting. Add up every increase and pending request and the total comes to roughly $93 billion, as of the tracker’s March 18, 2026 update.
The Electric and Natural Gas Utility Rate Hikes Tracker, a joint project of the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council first published in June 2025, compiles rate cases filed with state utility commissions and other regulators, then converts each filing into an estimate of how many customers it touches and how much it is worth. Because state commissions decide these cases on their own schedules, the running total shifts as new filings appear and older ones are resolved, but the direction has been consistently upward for well over a year, and the tracker’s authors update the count regularly as fresh cases are filed.
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Why Rates Keep Climbing: An Aging Grid and AI’s Power Appetite
Utilities and the researchers who track their rate filings point to a similar mix of drivers behind the increases. A big one is infrastructure: power companies are in the middle of a wave of spending to replace aging transmission lines, harden equipment against extreme weather, and expand distribution networks that in many regions predate cell phones. Utilities nationally have laid out roughly $1.4 trillion in planned capital spending covering new power plants, transmission upgrades, and grid modernization, costs that are ultimately recovered from ratepayers through the rates a commission approves. Storm-hardening work in particular has become a bigger line item after a run of major weather events left utilities and regulators more willing to approve spending aimed at preventing multi-day outages.
A newer driver is the surge in electricity demand from data centers built to run artificial intelligence. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that data center growth was responsible for $9.3 billion of a $14 billion regional capacity bill in the PJM Interconnection grid region for 2025-26 alone, and that cumulative capacity costs tied to data centers could reach $163 billion through 2033, translating to roughly $70 a month in added costs for an average household in that region if utilities pass the expense through to residential customers. That is on top of the routine infrastructure spending utilities were already recovering from customers before data centers became a factor in their capacity planning.
What a Rising Utility Bill Does to a Fixed Retirement Income
Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment is built from a broad basket of consumer prices, not from utility rates specifically, so when electric and gas bills rise faster than the overall adjustment, the gap comes straight out of a retiree’s remaining budget. Utility costs are also hard to shrink quickly: heating, cooling, and basic appliance use don’t disappear even when a household is watching every dollar, which is part of why the tracker’s authors flag these increases as a particular strain on lower-income and fixed-income households that spend a larger share of their monthly income on home energy than the typical working-age household.
The pattern is not limited to a handful of states. The tracker finds increases or increase requests in 49 states plus Washington, D.C., nearly the entire country, meaning most retirees are likely to see some version of this pressure on their own utility bills over the coming year, whether their state’s case has already been decided or is still working through a public rate hearing. Retirees who moved to a lower cost-of-living state to stretch a fixed income may find that advantage narrowing if their new state’s utilities are among those seeking large increases, a reminder that housing costs alone don’t capture the full picture of a region’s affordability.
Rate Cases Still Move Through Public Hearings
Not every dollar in the tracker’s total is a done deal. Rate increases typically move through a formal case before a state public utility commission, a process that usually includes a public comment period before regulators approve, reduce, or reject what a utility has requested. That means some of the $93 billion reflects requests still under review rather than rates already appearing on a bill, and consumer advocates, state consumer counsels, and individual ratepayers can weigh in before a final rate is set. Some cases end with regulators approving less than a utility originally sought, so the final total billed to customers is likely to land below the full $93 billion once every pending case is resolved.
For retirees trying to plan around the change, the practical steps mirror what utility commissions and consumer advocates have long recommended: check with the state public utility commission for hearing schedules on any pending case in the area, ask the utility directly about budget billing or low-income energy assistance programs, and watch new bills closely for a change in the itemized rate rather than assuming any single increase will be temporary. Many utilities also offer free home energy audits that can identify inexpensive fixes, such as weatherstripping or thermostat adjustments, that blunt the impact of a rate increase without requiring a major purchase.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
