Donald Trump promised to slash US electricity bills, but they have increased by 11% since he retook the White House, new data shows.
Democratic lawmakers highlighted the figures in a letter sent to Trump on Friday. “Your administration has no explanations for its failures and no answers for American families that are hit hard by high energy costs, and it continues to actively pursue policies to make this cost crisis worse,” reads the missive, led by Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator.
Trump said on the campaign trail he would “cut the price of energy and electricity in half” by the start of 2026. Since January, however, average utility prices have gone up by 11% nationally, the lawmakers write.
That’s according to a new analysis from the green group Climate Power, which is based on data from the US Energy Information Administration.
Among the reasons for the increase are Trump’s moves to boost fossil fuels, says the new letter, which was also signed by the senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. That includes coal, the costliest and dirtiest energy source.
The president has also waged a war on inexpensive wind and solar power, despite soaring electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence datacenters. More than 12m US homes could have been powered by the clean energy projects that have been cancelled or delayed since Trump’s re-election, says the letter, citing the new Climate Power analysis.
“In effect, you have created a massive cut in energy supply,” the senators say.
Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said: “Democrats should spend less time writing letters, and more time reversing their green energy policies that drove electricity prices up,” claiming that blue states “continue to have higher electricity prices because of their obsession with unreliable and costly green energy sources like wind and solar”.
Trump’s war on renewable power is also spurring job loss, thereby creating even more economic chaos for US households, the lawmakers note. Since he took office, about 150,000 clean energy jobs have been lost or stalled, with another 150,000 potentially facing the same fate, they wrote, citing an earlier analysis of public data by Climate Power.
The White House has also “made the crisis worse” by proposing to eliminate the $4bn which Congress approved for heating and cooling aid via the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the lawmakers say. He is also seeking to cut or eliminate funding for the Energy Star program, which promotes energy-efficiency and has saved Americans $500bn in energy costs, according to federal data.
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Meanwhile, Trump’s “chaotic, widely inconsistent tariffs” on imported goods have raised the cost of materials needed for power transmission, which the lawmakers say is “pushing up utility bills” further.
The senators’ letter follows an inquiry they launched in July, when they wrote to the heads of six federal agencies to ask the administration’s plan to meet its pledge to slash utility costs. The responses were “disappointing”, the new letter says, with departments either not replying or only providing “platitudes”.
To lower energy costs, the three senators say, the Trump administration should “restore funding to thousands of energy projects slated to add much-needed supply to the grid, reverse costly fossil fuel plant mandates, and ensure the public continues to have access to the energy bill assistance they deserve”.
The time to act is now, they write: “With heating costs set to soar this winter, it is time to admit that your energy policy has failed and to reverse course before it is too late.”
