As Americans struggle with rising prices, Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to “cut your energy costs in half within 12 months after taking office” already appears to be another broken promise.
Trump’s promise, reported by NBC News last September, is difficult to square with the reality facing consumers: the cost of electricity is on the rise, national inflation rates have increased and natural gas service is up more than five times from inflation standards.
As of Aug. 12, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the cost of energy services, which refers to power production through electricity and natural gas, are up 7.2%, compared to overall inflation being up 2.7% in the last year. Electricity costs nationally are up 5.5%, while natural gas and piped gases have increased in price by 13.8%.
This news comes in an increasingly confusing energy market, where the Trump administration most recently shut down construction on the Revolution Wind off-shore wind project that was set to supply 700 megawatts of power to Rhode Island and Connecticut.
The decision, which has received widespread scorn from much of New England’s leadership, effectively removes energy production from the market locally when the power grid already faces challenges. It comes as the federal budget sunsets and ends renewable energy incentives and grants, actively reducing use of wind and solar power.
As Connecticut Senate Republicans have downplayed the Revolution Wind cancellation and called for Connecticut to increase its reliance on natural gas, the energy blog Utility Dive reported that growing worldwide demand is pushing the cost of natural gas higher, which is the foremost contributor to rising energy bills. Since 40% of American power generation comes from natural gas, that’s expected to further contribute to energy bills growing, with natural gas prices expected to more than double from 2024.
“There will be higher prices for everybody, across the board … I don’t see a way around that,” Dennis Wamsted, an analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Utility Dive.
That’s not great news for Connecticut, which uses natural gas to generate 60% of its power as of 2023, according to EPA records. The EPA noted that as Connecticut is increasing its consumption of natural gas, ensuring sufficient supply is a critical issue for local energy production, and the state does not have its own production or storage for the fuel source. Recent global events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine have caused significant fluctuations in the cost of energy in the region, a trend likely to grow in coming years.
The issue, however, isn’t limited to any one region of the country. Growing use of AI and building data centers, which are expected to use more power than households as soon as next year, are putting more pressure on the grid, NPR said, on top of the natural gas issue.
This pressure is building – one in six households nationally struggle to pay current electric bills, even as these costs continue to grow, and making matters worse, the Trump administration is seeking to end the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4 billion in energy relief annually, including $80 million for Connecticut households.
The good news: despite inflation metrics ticking up, the job market slowing and energy prices on an upward slope, the president thinks he’s doing a great job. “Prices are ‘WAY DOWN’ in the USA, with virtually no inflation,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform on Sept. 1, claiming “Energy prices are falling, ‘big time.'”
