America’s Fossil Fuel Ambitions Are Driving Up Your Energy Bill |
A tanker getting ready to be filled up with liquefied natural gas.Marie D. De Jesús/ Houston Chronicle/AP
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
During the 2024 campaign, President Donald Trump promised voters that his policies would lower their energy prices by 50 percent, repeating this pledge in speeches in New York, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. “We will cut energy and electricity prices in half within 12 months—not just for businesses but for all Americans and their families,” he wrote in a Newsweek op-ed.
That hasn’t happened. Nationwide, electricity bills are up 13 percent compared to last year, with some states facing steeper jumps than others. One of the reasons for those increases is the growing export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and a corresponding spike in gas prices, argues a new report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization.
The analysis, based on data from the US Energy Information Administration, found that Americans paid $12 billion more for natural gas between January and September 2025 than they did over the same period last year. Because natural gas is used to heat homes directly and to power the electric grid, its price has an outsized impact on Americans’ utility bills. Higher exports leave Americans more exposed to swings in the global market.
“They put the LNG industry on speed dial inside the Oval Office.”
LNG exports were up 22 percent this year, according to the report. While the US is already the world’s largest exporter of the fuel, the second Trump administration has made increasing LNG exports a priority.
“Trump’s prioritization of LNG exports is directly in the way of efforts to address energy affordability,” said Tyson Slocum, author of the report and the director of Public Citizen’s energy program.........