Before she sat down to talk with the Guardian, Zattura Sims-El bent over to plug a table lamp into the wall.
“I unplug everything in this house when I’m not using it, because I’ve heard that as long as it’s plugged into the wall, it costs you money,” she said. “The only things I don’t unplug are my stove, my dishwasher, my refrigerator and my washing machine.”
The 76-year-old resident of Baltimore, Maryland adopted this habit in an effort to keep a lid on her utility costs. Despite his efforts, his monthly gas and electricity bill last year was always above $500, reaching $975 in one month.
“It’s obscene,” said Sims-El, who has lived in her home for 46 years. “How is one supposed to live with this?
During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly promised that if elected, he would halve Americans’ energy bills within a year of returning to the White House. The Guardian’s analysis has shown that he has completely failed to deliver on that pledge.
Asked about the president’s promise, Sims-El said, “Trump is a liar, and I know that with all my heart.”
According to Energy Information Administration data, the average American household will pay about $116 more for electricity in 2025 than last year, an increase of 6.7%. Gas prices also rose an average of 5.2%, federal data shows.
“If they keep growing, who will be able to pay their bills?” Sims-El asked. “Certainly not me, not anyone except the extremely wealthy.”
sacrifice
Sims-El said she has had to make lifestyle changes to deal with her energy costs. Whereas she used to buy her groceries at a huge supermarket nearby, she now visits several stores each week to shop for bargains – a process that can take hours.
Halfway across the country, Samantha Lott, a resident of Denton, Texas, It has also adapted its shopping habits to cope with rising energy costs. Last year, after Lott was diagnosed with endometriosis, her doctor suggested she adopt an anti-inflammatory diet. But energy costs have made it impossible to afford “anything but basic groceries, on which I can get deals.” And now she finds herself making an even more difficult sacrifice: cutting back on therapy appointments.
“It’s really hard, because I have to choose: Do I go to the doctor this month and get the follow-up appointments I need, or do I have to pay for electricity?” He said. “The copay for an appointment is $70, but I need that $70 to pay my bills.”
Liz Jacob, chief staff attorney and energy insecurity coordinator at the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice in Detroit, Michigan, said she’s seen many clients driven to make these types of choices, “cutting back on food, toys, resources for their kids, and anything else they can do.” With both gas and electricity prices so high, some people are forced to choose between the two utilities, Jacobs said.
“Some people turn off their gas service and just keep the electricity on in the winter, using space heaters to heat rooms they frequent because they can’t afford to heat the whole house,” she said. “Others talk about turning off their electricity service and turning to gas only because they need heat, even though they then have no access to lights in their homes.”
Datacenter and gas export
One driver of rising energy bills by 2025 was the nationwide proliferation of datacenters for artificial intelligence. In October, PJM – the grid operator covering 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states as well as the District of Columbia – called datacenters the “primary cause” of growth. price of electricity. In July, Trump introduced a plan to streamline permitting for datacenters, semiconductor manufacturing facilities and fossil fuel infrastructure.
“They’re going to put a strain on the grid with these datacenters, which is massive development,” said David Jones, a 45-year-old South Baltimore resident. “Why should we charge for it?”
Jones, who lives in Baltimore’s industrial Curtis Bay neighborhood, said his monthly bill in 2025 was “at least $100” higher than last year.
Amid growing outrage over sky-high electricity bills, the president announced last week that he was pressuring tech companies to foot the bill for the rising costs associated with their datacenters.
“We are the ‘hottest’ country in the world and number one in AI,” Trump said. Posted on Truth Social. “Data centers are key to that boom, and keep Americans free and safe, but, the big technology companies that build them have to ‘pay their own way.'”
On Friday, Trump officials also met with current and former governors of East Coast states to discuss the energy demands of the AI datacenter boom, then released a plan urging PJM to strike deals with technology companies to ensure they foot the bill for boosting the nation’s power supply.
But Trump has not backed down from his blatantly pro-fossil fuel agenda, which has also driven up energy costs. For example, his administration’s efforts to increase liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports could cost American households a combined $12 billion in losses in the first nine months of 2025, according to a december report From consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen.
Jones cast his vote for Trump in the 2024 election because he felt America needed a “businessman” in office, and because he could not bring himself to vote for Joe Biden. He said he still has affection for the President. But he believes Trump has been heavily influenced by big tech and fossil fuel industry donors.
“Their ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda hurts Americans,” he said. “I know he means well… but if I knew about a lot of the work he’s done, as far as energy and things like that, I probably wouldn’t have voted for him.”
When contacted for comment, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said that federal officials “will continue to aggressively implement President Trump’s energy dominance agenda because affordable energy can bring unprecedented growth to every aspect of our economy”.
“Blue states are stubbornly choosing green energy scam policies that are making power bills unaffordable,” he said in an email. “Meanwhile, GOP-led states are successfully lowering energy costs for their residents by adopting President Trump’s common-sense ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda.”
cut aid
Since the Trump administration presided over rising electricity and gas prices, White House officials have made it more difficult for Americans to access energy assistance.
Last year, the administration wiped out Tax credits for cost-cutting home energy-efficiency upgrades. It also attempted to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps 6 million low-income Americans with their energy bills each year.
The program survived, but has suffered significant disruption since administration Entire LIHEAP staff fired. The cuts and record-breaking government shutdown caused unprecedented delays in getting energy assistance to low-income households.
“Detroit isn’t even taking aid applications right now because there’s so much backlog from that time,” Jacobs said. “They have so many applications to process that they’re not taking new applications.”
Angie Shenefelt, 52, of Curtis Bay, Baltimore, has seen her bill rise sharply this year, from less than $300 in December 2024 to $400 last month.
Late last year, she applied for funding from the LIHEAP-funded Maryland program after receiving a gas and electric cutoff notice over past-due amounts. His application was immediately rejected.
“They said that because of the sheer volume of applications – the funds would be gone by the time they got to me,” he said. “The only place I was able to get help was a church…and it wasn’t easy. Just finding the help that’s available is a full-time job.”
Shenefelt missed the cutoff but is still struggling to pay her bills, especially because she lost her husband in February. She’s considering taking on a second job, even signing up last month to deliver food with DoorDash.
“I’m not young, and I already work full-time, and I feel like working more will weaken my body,” she said. “But what am I going to do?”
The longer work hours will leave Shenefelt with even less time with her 13-year-old twin daughters, but Another gas and electricity rate hike If plans are made for the next month, he may be forced to bring in more income.
“I’ve already slimmed down a lot,” she said. “And now I have to give up time with my family?”
