Trump's Energy Policy Backfires as Consumer Bills Soar
- The average U.S. household electricity bill increased by 6.7 percent in 2025, with gas costs also rising by 5.2 percent, despite the President's campaign promises to drive down energy costs.
- President Trump's executive orders upon his second term focused on expanding fossil fuels and curbing the Inflation Reduction Act, which led to stalled renewable energy projects and greater investor uncertainty.
- The rise in U.S. energy demand, partly driven by support for large-scale data centers for AI, combined with the slow-down of new energy capacity development, is expected to continue driving up consumer energy bills.
Despite President Trump’s big promises of driving down consumer energy bills, the cost of energy actually rose for consumers in 2025. Throughout his electoral campaign and during his first year in office, Trump pledged to slash Americans’ energy bills. However, his new approach to energy seems to have done the opposite, with higher prices expected for 2026 and beyond.
Upon entering office for his second term, President Trump announced a state of energy emergency, quickly passing executive orders to curb the rollout of former-President Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and limit the deployment of renewable energy, to instead focus on expanding fossil fuels. This resulted in the pause of several wind energy projects across the U.S., as well as greater investor uncertainty in the clean energy sector, which stalled development. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to expand its oil and gas operations and is prolonging the life of several of its coal plants.
According to a Guardian analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average household electricity bill in the U.S. was 6.7 percent higher in 2025 than in 2024. This equates to an average household spending of around $116 more in 2025 than in the previous year. Some states have seen energy bills increase at a faster pace than others, with Washington DC experiencing the more dramatic increase, with electricity costs at 23 percent higher in 2025. Indiana came in second, with a 17 percent increase.
In addition to higher electricity bills, the cost of gas has also increased, by around 5.2 percent on average in the last year, according to EIA figures. This has led to an upsurge in disconnections for unpaid bills across several states. For example, the disconnection rate in New York State rose fivefold. This trend reflects the rising pressure on the consumer to choose between essentials, as the cost of groceries has also increased.
The executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, Mark Wolfe, stated, “Instead of reducing electric bills by 50 percent, the president’s actions have raised the cost of home energy for all Americans.” Wolfe added, “It used to be the poorest Americans who struggled with their power bills, but now we are seeing more and more middle-income families who have to make sacrifices to avoid being shut off. But there’s a limit to how much people are able to sacrifice, which we are very concerned about.”
In recent weeks, Trump has claimed that the affordability crisis is a “hoax” and a “fake narrative” invented by his political enemies. The president has also suggested that 2025 was the “greatest first year in history” for the economy.
As Trump focuses on expanding oil and gas production and keeping coal plants running, Americans are losing out on cheaper and cleaner sources, such as wind energy. Because coal-fired plants are increasingly costly and inefficient to run, delaying the decommissioning of several ageing U.S. plants is costing the consumer billions. Meanwhile, works have halted on several offshore wind energy projects over the past year, as Trump has restricted development in the sector, leading several companies to fight the move in court.
The projects that have been cancelled or delayed since Trump came into office have resulted in a loss of almost 25 GW of planned energy generation, which could have provided power to almost 13.2 million households, according to a Climate Power report published in December.
Meanwhile, Trump’s broad support for large-scale data centres, to support the rollout of artificial intelligence (AI), has driven the U.S. energy demand to increase for the first time in decades. Greater pressure from consumers about rising bills and concerns over an energy supply gap has finally led the White House to call for an emergency wholesale electricity auction, aimed at forcing tech companies to pay for the new power they require to run giant data centres.
In addition to encouraging fossil fuel expansion, Trump has also shown support for nuclear power, with significant investments in a range of nuclear technologies. While new power plants could help provide vast quantities of clean power to consumers, they will take several years to develop, during which time there will likely be a power supply shortage if tech companies are given free rein.
The increase in U.S. energy demand is expected to drive up consumer energy bills. While tech companies may be more than happy to pay a high price to get their data centre expansions approved, finding the energy needed to power normal households will be challenging. This is largely because the shift away from renewable energy expansion has slowed the development of new energy capacity. While investments in nuclear power may eventually help to fill this gap, it will likely take decades for them to make a meaningful impact.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
Trump Slashes Clean Energy Loans, Bets Big on Gas and Nuclear
- The Trump Administration is dismantling Biden-era clean energy financing, with the U.S. Department of Energy restructuring or canceling over $83 billion in loans.
- The revamped Office of Energy Dominance Financing has cut or revised most prior commitments, de-obligating about $30 billion and revising $54 billion, while eliminating $9.5 billion in wind and solar projects in favor of gas, coal, and nuclear.
- The shift has raised cost and reliability concerns, with the American Clean Power Association warning that sidelining clean energy could add up to $360 billion in power costs across PJM states over the next decade.
The Trump Administration continues to revise, restructure, and cancel billions of U.S. dollars of Biden-era loans and funding commitments to clean energy projects as the United States shifted its policy to supporting fossil fuels and nuclear power as part of its energy dominance agenda.
In the latest instalment of canceled or revised funding, the Department of Energy this week announced that the Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF), previously known as the Loan Programs Office (LPO), is restructuring, revising, or eliminating more than $83 billion in what it called “Green New Scam” loans and conditional commitments from the Biden-era loan portfolio.
EDF has reviewed in the past year each borrower of these funds “to ensure loans were a responsible investment of taxpayer dollars and aligned with the Administration’s priorities,” the Department of Energy said.
EDF is reforming the office to more responsibly steward taxpayer dollars and support financing opportunities that accelerate the deployment of affordable, reliable, and secure American energy.
For the Trump Administration, affordable, reliable, and secure energy means fossil fuels and nuclear power, and excludes solar and wind capacity projects.
The Biden Administration has committed over $104 billion in financing, of which $85 billion was closed or committed between Election Day 2024 and Inauguration Day 2025, DOE said.
“We found more dollars were rushed out the door of the Loan Programs Office in the final months of the Biden Administration than had been disbursed in over fifteen years,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.
Out of the $104 billion in Biden-era principal loan obligations, EDF has completed or is in the process of de-obligating over $29.9 billion (about 29%) and has completed or is in the process of revising another $53.6 billion (approximately 51%) of this total.
EDF has also eliminated about $9.5 billion in government-subsidized, intermittent wind and solar projects, and, where possible, replacing those projects with natural gas and nuclear uprates that provide more affordable and reliable energy, DOE said.
The financing vehicle now has more than $289 billion in available loan authority, and the restructuring of the priorities of the loan office means that EDF will be backing six energy sectors. These are nuclear energy; coal, oil, gas, and hydrocarbons; critical materials and minerals; geothermal energy; grid and transmission; and manufacturing and transportation.
The latest axing of Biden-era loans to energy projects shouldn’t be a surprise. The Trump Administration has been looking for ways to cancel billions of dollars of commitments to clean energy projects, including solar, wind, and EV production. Hundreds of projects worth dozens of billions have been terminated since President Donald Trump took office a year ago.
In the year since Inauguration Day, the Trump Administration has made abundantly clear that it will back fossil fuels and gas for affordable and reliable energy and will look to degrade solar and wind as contributors to meeting America’s surging power demand—the highest demand growth since the 1990s, due to AI, data centers, and advanced manufacturing.
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration gave the latest signal that it prefers natural gas, coal, and nuclear power to provide the bulk of new generation supporting the data center build-out.
Energy Secretary Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and the bipartisan group of governors of all 13 states served by PJM Interconnection issued a so-called Statement of Principles urging the biggest U.S. power grid operator to hold a capacity auction, in which leading technology companies have committed to funding this new generation capacity.
Coal, natural gas, and nuclear will be the pillars of the new U.S. power capacity, providing reliable baseload, and ending years of “misguided policies” that favored intermittent energy resources such as solar and wind power, the U.S. Administration said.
Following the call on PJM for a capacity auction, the American Clean Power Association (ACP) said in an analysis that without timely deployment of significant new clean energy resources, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states “face serious reliability risks and dramatically higher electricity costs over the next decade.”
The mismatch between immediate demand growth and the lead time of new conventional generation means that, without new clean energy development, ratepayers across nine PJM states would pay an additional $360 billion over the next ten years, driven primarily by higher wholesale electricity prices. The average residential household would see $3,000 to $8,500 in additional electricity costs over the next decade, ACP estimates.
“To keep the lights on and power economic growth, PJM needs resources that can be built quickly, operate reliably, and protect customers from surprises on their electric bills,” said John Hensley, Senior Vice President of Markets and Policy Analysis at ACP.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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