As electricity bills rise across the United States, renewable energy has become a convenient scapegoat, but the evidence tells a very different story.
In a March 2026 report drawing on monthly electricity bill data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Joint Economic Committee found that the average American household paid approximately $110 more in electricity costs in 2025 compared to 2024, an increase of 6.4%. Nearly every state saw higher annual electricity costs, with 12 states and the District of Columbia experiencing increases of 10% or more.
The reality is straightforward: electricity prices are rising because of fossil fuel volatility, extreme weather and grid inefficiencies – not because of renewables, which are increasingly helping to contain costs.
Amid these rising costs, clean energy has become a convenient target. Organizations with ties to fossil fuels have been quick to blame the rapid growth of wind and solar, calling for an end to renewable subsidies and a return to coal and gas. But as Clean Air Task Force noted in a March 2026 report, “clean electricity generation is not the culprit of cost increases,” and states with the highest growth in renewable generation share have actually seen some of the largest decreases in electricity rates.
The real drivers of electricity costs are more complex, and far more consistent across regions than critics suggest. They fall into three primary categories:
- Fuel volatility: Natural gas remains the dominant electricity source in the U.S., and in many markets, gas-fueled power plants set the marginal price of electricity. As a result, fluctuations in natural gas prices ripple across entire regional grids, directly impacting what consumers pay. As the U.S. expands its liquefied natural gas export capacity, growing global competition for supply is less likely to increase that volatility, not reduce it.
- Aging infrastructure: The cost of maintaining and upgrading the grid is rising rapidly. According to Clean Air Task Force, distribution spending increased 160% and transmission spending nearly tripled between 2003-2023, even as congestion persists. These costs are increasingly passed on to ratepayers, often without delivering corresponding improvements in affordability.
- Climate-driven impacts: Extreme weather is making electricity systems more expensive to operate. From wildfires in California to hurricanes in the Southeast and heat waves across the Southwest, utilities are facing higher costs tied to damage, resilience investments and peak demand.
These dynamics are echoed in regional analyses. Canary Media reports that rising costs are being driven by natural gas prices in the Northeast, extreme weather in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, hotter summers in the Southwest and Mountain West, geographic isolation in Alaska, oil dependence in Hawaii and a “regulatory free-for-all" in Texas.
Unlike fossil fuels, solar and wind are largely immune to the supply disruptions and geopolitical shocks that drive price spikes in global energy markets. That structural advantage is becoming more valuable as international instability persists. Misidentifying the source of rising costs doesn’t just distort the conversation, it risks locking in the very volatility that’s driving them.
At the same time, solar is delivering measurable, real-world benefits in the communities where it has been deployed, including lower electric bills for subscribers, stable income for farmers and landowners and local jobs tied to the installation, maintenance and ownership of clean energy assets.
Some states are already acting on this evidence. In New Jersey, Governor Mikie Sherrill declared a utility affordability emergency on her first day in office and signed executive orders directing the rapid expansion of solar and battery storage. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities quickly followed, approving a historic 3,000 MW Community Solar expansion, enough to deliver savings to approximately 450,000 subscribers, alongside 355 MW in new battery storage projected to generate $169 million in ratepayer savings, all funded through existing state resources with no new charges on customers’ bills.
Massachusetts has moved with similar urgency. In March 2026, Governor Maura Healey signed an executive order targeting 10 GW of new energy resources by 2035, including 4 GW of in-state solar and 5 GW of energy storage, as a direct strategy to reduce ratepayer exposure to fossil fuel price volatility. The case for this approach is already visible in the data: on the hottest day of 2025, solar met 22% of Massachusetts’ electricity demand, saving customers $8.2 million in a single day.
For commercial and industrial customers, on-site solar offers a direct path to lower operating costs and a hedge against the grid volatility that fossil fuel dependence creates. By generating electricity on-site, businesses can reduce their dependence on a grid still burdened by expensive fossil fuel inputs and aging infrastructure. Combined with battery storage, commercial solar can further reduce exposure to peak-hour demand charges, which can represent a substantial share of a business's total electricity costs.
The path to lower electricity bills runs through more clean energy, not less. When fossil fuel volatility, aging infrastructure and rising demand are driving costs higher, pulling back on the cheapest and fastest sources of new generation doesn’t solve the problem, it makes it worse. The states making real progress on affordability aren’t retreating from clean energy, they’re accelerating it.
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