From the cold snap this winter to the U.S.’s war with Iran, rising energy bills are making headlines. But there’s a larger story behind spikes in gas-utility costs, one decades in the making.
The main driver of these bills used to be the price of gas itself. Now it’s the gas system infrastructure, like pipeline replacements: That accounted for about 70 percent of customer bills in 2024, while gas ...
The strongest version of this narrative highlights a structural shift in energy costs, where infrastructure—rather than fuel prices—drives rising bills. The report from the Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC) presents a compelling case that accelerated pipeline replacements, enabled by state policies, have outpaced demand growth, making the gas system increasingly expensive and underutilized. The gas industry counters with cost-saving claims, but the trend toward electrification and state-l...