Americans face soaring energy bills as Trump's promise remains unmet

US President Donald Trump made sweeping promises to reduce the cost of living during his campaign for a second term, repeatedly vowing that he would cut Americans' energy bills in half within a year of taking office.

"I will cut the price of energy and electricity in half — ready? — 12 months from January 20th. I take office on January 20th, your electric bill, including cars, air conditioners, heating, everything, your total electric bill will be 50 — five-O — 50 percent less," he said at the Detroit Economic Club on Oct 10, 2024.

But many Americans say they have yet to see any relief.

Luis Jimenez, 35, who lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York, said he has seen the opposite trend.

"I felt like my bills have gotten more expensive," he told China Daily, estimating that his monthly costs have risen by about 10 percent. Jimenez is far from alone.

An analysis by The Century Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, compared 12-month averages from March 2022 to June 2025 and found that monthly energy costs surged 35 percent during that period, rising from $196 to $265.

Even so, the Trump administration continues to insist progress is being made. In a Nov 14 statement, the White House said that "inflation has dropped to an average of just 2.7 percent" and asserted that "energy prices will fall further — igniting other price declines," despite data showing the opposite.

The Century Foundation's research also shows a mounting burden of unpaid utility bills. The average overdue balance climbed from $597 to $789, a 32 percent increase. Nearly 14 million Americans, or about one in 20 households, now face utility debts "so severe" they are at risk of being referred to collection agencies.

"Our findings paint a grim picture: a toxic combination of increasing energy prices, rising overdue balances, and squeezed household budgets that together are pushing families deeper and deeper into debt," the organization wrote. "Soaring utility bills are the tip of the iceberg for millions of Americans already overburdened by rising costs for health care, groceries, rent, childcare, education and more."

Donald Heller, a homeowner and senior citizen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania said his electricity bill now averages $400 a month.

"There has been no decrease in the average charges. If anything, rates seem to be slowly increasing. Promises made, promises broken," he said. "$400 is a lot for me. Even though I can afford it, (it's) way too much for 90 percent of American people."

Steven Potter, a retired homeowner in Houston, Texas said "it (electricity bill) is always around $200 a month. It has not gone down, in fact it has gone up slightly … Maybe 20 percent ... it is a substantial part of most people's budgets."

While electricity costs vary by region and utility provider, the broader trend is unmistakable: More than nine months into Trump's second presidency, his pledge to cut Americans' energy bills in half has yet to materialize.

Debate over the causes of rising electricity prices has intensified. The Trump administration has blamed renewable energy for higher costs, while Democrats argue the opposite, saying the administration's cuts to renewable-energy funding have contributed to the upward pressure on prices. Some also point to the rapid expansion of mega data centers, which consume enormous amounts of electricity, while others argue that the rising costs stem from expensive upgrades to the power grid.

Some experts pointed out renewable energy isn't the main factor that's been driving the bill up, as it only accounts for 17 percent of US energy consumption.

"When you look at what's driving electricity bills, it's really poles and wires," Charles Hua, founder of PowerLines, a nonprofit working to reshape the energy sector and reduce utility costs, told The New York Times.

According to the Lawrence Berkeley report, utility companies spent roughly $6 billion more on "overhead poles, towers and conductors" in 2023 than they did in 2019, as much of the nation's grid infrastructure nears the end of its lifespan and requires replacement.

Various grid components, including transformers, are in short supply amid surging demand. Imports account for an estimated 80 percent of the US power-transformer supply, and tariffs have sharply driven up unit costs, according to Wood Mackenzie, a global research firm focused on energy and natural resources.

Robinson Meyer, founding executive editor of Heatmap News, a climate news platform, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, said, "It's a cost of climate change."

He told NPR: "We've had the grid for a long time, and it's time for those systems to be replaced. And unfortunately, they're beginning to be replaced at the same time as we're seeing rising electricity demand for the first time in the US in a generation."

The Trump administration's policy on rapid data center expansion has also played a role, creating a sharp surge in electricity demand.

"Part of the problem is that you can often build new data centers faster than you can build new power plants to supply them … And that bottleneck can really drive up costs in the short term," Geoffrey Blanford, a principal technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, told The New York Times.

Meyer also noted that rising power demand necessitates building additional grid infrastructure, as the existing system is already under strain.

"But recent Trump administration policies will make this harder. The reconciliation bill's termination of wind and solar tax credits, its tariffs on electrical equipment, and a new swathe of anti-renewable regulations will make it much more expensive to add new power capacity to the strained grid. All those costs will eventually hit power bills, too, even if it takes a few years," Meyer wrote on Heatmap News.

PowerLines estimates that nearly 80 million Americans struggle to pay their utility bills. As winter approaches, families across the country are forced to balance keeping the lights on with covering other essential expenses. For now, Trump's promise to halve energy bills remains unfulfilled, leaving many to wonder when, or if, relief will arrive.