NEADA projects heating oil bills will rise 50% this winter
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) compiled the July figures from 10 states, including New York, Georgia, California, and Illinois. The 28% rise in disconnections came as three separate heat dome events — probably worsened by global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels — affected much of the country during the hottest July ever recorded in the US.
Mark Wolfe, NEADA’s executive director, said the agency has been hearing from households whose bills have doubled. “We have been hearing from so many people angry and desperate because their bills have doubled – temperatures are going up and so are the costs,” Wolfe said. He added: “People now are cutting back on food or medicine or resorting to payday lenders because you need to get the power back on. The protections in place aren’t working, it’s just cruel. Poorer people and older people aren’t turning on the AC because of the cost and when you get back-to-back heatwaves they may die because of that.”
Not all states require utilities to report shutoff figures, leaving the national picture incomplete. The federal government reported 13.4 million household shutoffs in 2024, with rates particularly high in southern states including Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. NEADA estimates about one in six US households are now behind on their energy bills, putting them at potential risk of disconnection.
The risk varies by state. Twenty-three states and Washington, DC, have rules preventing electricity disconnections when the heat rises above a certain threshold, according to NEADA. The remaining 27 states allow shutoffs regardless of the weather. “Most people do manage to find some way to pay the bill and get reconnected, but the core problem is that electricity prices are continuing to rise faster than overall inflation,” Wolfe said.
Households described the toll. Carol Norman, a 70-year-old who lives in Tom Bean, Texas, said her utility bills rose to about $600 a month, mostly for air conditioning. She now uses bursts of cooling in a single space and rarely ventures outside in summer. “A couple of times I walked to the grocery store before it got too hot but once it gets to 100F [37C] you can’t go out,” Norman, who has custody of her 18-year-old grandson, said. “It’s very isolating, it’s depressing. I’ve had panic attacks worrying about my electricity bill. If my daughter didn’t help out I would probably have ended up homeless or close to it.”
An anonymous North Carolina man said he had curtailed his daughter’s outdoor activities. “It’s sad because I usually love being out and about in the summer and I want to share that joy with my child but I’m scared of her overheating and suffering a heat injury,” he said.
Nina Johnson, of Austin, Texas, said electric bills of more than $200 take up a large portion of her monthly income of $550, forcing her to cut small pleasures. “I’m eating a lot of peanut butter sandwiches,” she said. “There are food banks, but I don’t have transportation and taking the bus and walking in the heat for blocks is too much for me.”
Erin Hutchins, of Biddeford, Maine, has previously suffered heatstroke and found this summer “unbearably hot” as the air conditioning in her older building does not adequately cool it. “I pay over $100 a month in electricity bills, and have had to go without other necessities to do so, because I live on a fixed income,” she said. “I think having heatstroke multiple times has permanently done damage, but it’s too soon to say. I don’t feel like the same person any more though.”
Electricity bills have been climbing in the US since 2021, driven by the power demands of artificial intelligence datacenters and the cost of utilities’ grid upgrades. According to the Guardian, the severe global energy disruption caused by the US and Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year has accelerated this trend, raising power bills and adding $100 billion in extra gasoline costs for Americans’ cars and trucks.
Donald Trump, who has dismissed climate science and concerns over soaring bills as a “hoax,” has consistently rejected criticism that the war has hurt Americans by raising fuel costs. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody,” Trump said in May. “We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, that’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.” At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump acknowledged higher gasoline costs but described them as “a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done.”
The Trump administration has also sought to “completely axe” the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which gives states money to assist households struggling with power bills. While Congress has not agreed to the program’s elimination, the administration has been accused of freezing obligated funds.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat, said the administration’s energy policy has compounded the burden on households. “Americans are very concerned about affordability and getting rid of low-income energy aid is a step in the wrong direction, especially since the administration has made decisions that have increased many people’s costs around energy,” Gallego said at New York Climate Week. She added that the administration’s attempts to curtail solar and wind power while supporting coal have also been harmful.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pushed back. “Lowering electricity prices is a top priority for President Trump, and he is aggressively unleashing reliable energy sources like coal and natural gas to reverse the catastrophic damage that Joe Biden and the Democrats did to our power grid,” Rogers said. “Joe Biden created a grid crisis, President Trump is fixing it. If the Democrats had their way, these costly and unreliable renewable energy projects would still be failing our grid and our communities.”
Even if LIHEAP is preserved, the program still directs about 80% of its funding to winter heating rather than summer cooling. Gallego said that mismatch has persisted across administrations. “That’s been a problem across multiple administrations when we’re seeing so much of the country have challenges with heat,” she said. “When I think about the mayors I know throughout the world, most of them have a heatwave to contend with. This is a growing and global challenge.”
Some cities and states have sought to provide financial assistance to households caught in the crunch of extreme weather and rising bills. Shade from extra trees, new water features in parks and playgrounds, cooling centers and early warning systems have all also become priorities for municipalities as hazards such as heatwaves have got fiercer.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city has been battered by floods since he took office. “I have never known more about the weather than I do now,” he said. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said this summer’s temperatures were particularly challenging because of an influx of visitors for the World Cup, America’s 250th anniversary celebrations, and a tall ships event. “We are past warning signs at this point, we are seeing increasing impacts from heat, flooding, air quality and livability and at the same time it has become more and more a political flashpoint to avoid talking about certain issues or words,” Wu said. “At the city level, it doesn’t matter what words are said. We just have to take action and respond to the reality our residents are living.”
With the record-hot summer past, NEADA’s attention is turning to winter. Wolfe estimated Monday that homes heated by oil, most common in the US northeast, will face bills 50% higher than last year. He asked Congress for a further $3 billion for LIHEAP to help defray the burden. “Winter is just around the bend, and we are very concerned about what this means for low-income families that use heating oil,” Wolfe said.