In the July CPI, electricity rose 4.2 percent and utility gas 4.3 percent over 12 months, above the 3.4 percent headline, while rent rose 2.9 percent and food at home 2.7 percent.

Rate increases at electric and gas utilities have stopped being a local story. A running tally kept by the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council now counts 275 utilities that have raised rates, won approval to raise them, or asked to raise them since the start of 2025. Together those cases…

The bill for oil heat does not arrive in twelve manageable pieces. It arrives in a driveway, usually in late summer or early fall, when a truck pumps a few hundred gallons into a basement tank and leaves behind a single invoice. For the households that heat this way, that delivery is the largest fixed…

When an energy bill outruns the budget, a lot of households quietly go without, turning the heat down too far in winter or the air conditioning off in a heat wave. There is a federal program built for exactly that squeeze, and many of the people it could help have never heard of it. The…

Here is a rare piece of good news about a household bill: the government expects gas prices to keep drifting lower. In its latest monthly energy outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that gasoline will get cheaper this year and stay relatively low into 2027 as crude oil prices fall. For a fixed-income household…

Most people think of home energy assistance as a winter program, something to help with the heating bill when it gets cold. But the same federal program helps with summer cooling too, and in many states the door is still open. If a hot-weather electric bill is stretching your budget, there may be a one-time…

Some of the most effective ways to cut a utility bill are also the least visible: insulation in the attic, sealing around drafty windows, a furnace that runs efficiently instead of straining. For income-eligible households, the federal government will pay for that work outright, with no cost to the homeowner or renter. It is one…

Most of the news about power bills runs one direction: up. So a genuine refund is worth paying attention to, and roughly two million Duke Energy Florida customers are getting one this summer. State regulators ordered the utility to return about $90 million it collected but did not need, and the money is arriving automatically…

A Louisiana summer turns air conditioning from a comfort into a necessity, and the electric bill that comes with it can crowd out other essentials for households already stretched thin. There is still time to get help. A federally funded program is taking applications for cooling-bill assistance through the end of September, and the aid…

Utility customers rarely learn when they have been overcharged, and even more rarely get the money back. In Nevada, both are happening at once. NV Energy is returning more than $63 million to customers it overbilled for years because of a classification mistake, and the refunds are already going out. The story is a small…