Electricity and natural gas bills are climbing for a majority of U.S. households, and the increases are tied less to a single storm or a single company than to a nationwide wave of rate cases moving through state utility commissions at the same time. A tracker maintained by the Center for American Progress in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council counts more than 116 million electric customers and nearly 60 million natural gas customers across 49 states and Washington, D.C. facing rates that have already gone up or have been proposed to go up since January 2025. For a retiree living on Social Security and a modest pension, that bill arrives on the same schedule as everyone else’s, with no option to simply wait out the increase.
A Tracker Built From Utility Filings and Rate-Case Dockets
The count comes from more than 275 electric and natural gas utilities that have implemented, been approved for, or proposed a rate increase taking effect in 2025 or later, according to the Center for American Progress and Natural Resources Defense Council utility rate tracker, which draws on state public utility commission dockets, company filings and utility press releases rather than survey data. As of its most recent update, the tracker puts the combined value of those increased or proposed rate changes at more than $101 billion between January 2025 and 2028, about $78.9 billion tied to electricity rate cases and $22.5 billion tied to natural gas cases. The distinction between “increased” and “proposed” matters: some of that total is already locked in through rate cases regulators have approved, while the rest is still moving through a docket and could still be trimmed, delayed or denied before it ever reaches a bill. Taken together, the tracker’s authors count 71 percent of U.S. electricity customers and 75 percent of natural gas customers as covered by a utility somewhere in that increased-or-proposed pool, spread across every state except Hawaii plus the District of Columbia.
Some of the steepest individual increases are concentrated in a handful of states: residents of Arkansas, New York and Massachusetts are among those the tracker flags for monthly bill increases of $40 or more once a pending rate case is fully phased in, a jump that can outrun a retiree’s month-to-month cushion far faster than a typical cost-of-living adjustment can absorb it. The utilities behind the increases point to a shared set of pressures behind the numbers: an aging transmission and distribution grid overdue for replacement, elevated natural gas prices feeding electricity generation costs, and new demand from data centers competing for the same power supply as residential customers. The tracker’s authors expect those pressures to keep pushing rates upward through the rest of the decade rather than settle after a single adjustment.
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A 2.8 Percent Cost-of-Living Adjustment Against a Faster-Moving Bill
Most Social Security beneficiaries are working with an income that grew 2.8 percent this year, the cost-of-living adjustment the Social Security Administration announced last October, which raised the average retirement benefit by about $56 a month starting in January. That adjustment is tied to a single inflation measure, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, and it is set once a year regardless of how a local utility commission rules on a rate case in the months that follow. A $40 monthly increase on an electric or gas bill, layered onto a heating bill that already climbs every winter, can absorb most of that year’s entire COLA increase inside a single household expense category, leaving nothing left over for the rest of a rising grocery or medical bill.
The mismatch is structural rather than incidental. A retiree’s income adjusts once annually by a fixed percentage tied to a national inflation index measured the previous year; a utility’s rates can move more than once as a multiyear rate case phases in additional increases on a schedule set by state regulators, not by the household budgeting around it. That difference in timing is part of why the tracker projects cumulative increases running through 2028 instead of a single one-time jump, and why a bill that looked manageable in January can look very different by the following winter.
The Federal Program Built to Offset This Specific Bill
There is a federal program aimed directly at this gap: the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Community Services and delivered through state, tribal and territory agencies rather than a single federal office. LIHEAP funds can go toward a heating or cooling bill directly, toward reconnecting a household whose service has already been shut off, or toward weatherization and minor equipment repairs that lower the bill going forward, according to the program’s federal overview. States set their own income cutoffs within a federal band, no less than 110 percent of the federal poverty guidelines and no more than the greater of 150 percent of those guidelines or 60 percent of the state median income, so who qualifies varies by state even though the program itself is federally funded.
The full fiscal year 2026 allocation for LIHEAP, more than $4 billion, has already been released to the states, according to the federal funding tables the Office of Community Services publishes each year, so the program is funded and taking applications now rather than waiting on a future budget decision. A household does not need to wait for the next bill to arrive before applying: the National Energy Assistance Referral hotline, 1-866-674-6327, routes callers to the office that handles intake in their state, since applications run through state and local agencies rather than a single national portal.
Matching a Rising Utility Bill to the Relief Categories That Cover It
The rate increases and LIHEAP both point to the same pattern: a retiree on a fixed income absorbs a utility bill set by state regulators and federal formulas on their own schedules, not the household’s. Property-tax bills tend to move on a similar timeline, often rising alongside the same grid and infrastructure costs utilities cite, and the relief built to offset a tax bill or a heating bill rarely finds the homeowner who already qualifies.
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This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor.
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.
