Rates Have Climbed Fast, and Keep Climbing

The average U.S. residential electricity rate has risen roughly 25 percent in just four years, from about 15 cents per kilowatt hour in 2022 to nearly 19 cents in early 2026 (Center for American Progress), with prices on pace to rise as much as 40 percent by 2030 (EESI). Electricity has outpaced inflation for over a year now, becoming one of the fastest growing costs in household budgets, ahead of groceries, vehicles, and medicine (Center for American Progress). In particular, residential rates hit 18.83 cents per kWh in April 2026, up 7.3 percent from a year earlier (EIA).

A major driver is utilities’ struggle to keep up with new demand from data centers, which requested more than 700 gigawatts of grid capacity in 2025 — more than the entire country consumed in all of 2023; in turn, this has prompted utilities to request more than $29 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025 alone, affecting an estimated 40 million customers nationwide (EESI). In states with a heavy concentration of data centers, like Virginia, rates have climbed as much as 267 percent over the past five years (EESI).

About one in six U.S. households are already behind on their energy bills, with outstanding utility debt reaching $25 billion and utility shut-offs climbing to 3.5 million in 2024 (EESI). Lower-income households, renters, and communities of color are shouldering a disproportionate share of that burden, often spending up to 20 percent of their income on energy compared with just three percent for higher-income households (EESI).

New England has felt the rise of electricity prices especially hard. Connecticut and Massachusetts posted average revenues of 26.78 and 25.28 cents per kWh respectively as of April 2026 (EIA). Disadvantaged by an aging grid, heavy reliance on natural gas, and rising regional demand, apartment owners and housing authorities across the region are pressured on operating budgets and residents who are already stretched thin by rising costs elsewhere.

How Policymakers Are Responding

Federal to State: What's Already Happened

At the federal level, rising electricity costs have become a central part of the national affordability conversation revolving around data center growth, tariffs, and the pace of new generation (Brookings). The primary response has centered on data centers, the largest driver of new demand.

In March 2026, the Trump administration brought Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI together to sign the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, committing them to cover the infrastructure costs of their own data centers rather than passing them on to residential ratepayers (The White House). The administration has paired that with a broader push to expand generation capacity, including actions to keep dozens of coal plants online and intervene directly in the PJM capacity market, the wholesale electricity market covering Maryland, Pennsylvania, and eleven other states (The White House).

Much of the most consequential action has come from governors rather than federal regulators, particularly around PJM. Pennsylvania's Governor Shapiro sued PJM in late 2024 over its auction design, winning a settlement that capped wholesale capacity prices — a cap that FERC has since extended through 2030. The results have compounded: Shapiro's office now puts total savings from that settlement at $45 billion across the 13-state PJM region, or roughly $800 per household over four years (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). Maryland's Governor Moore, who joined the same coalition pushing PJM for reform, points to $13.3 billion in savings from the most recent capacity auction alone (Maryland.gov).

Massachusetts has taken a more direct approach to near-term relief. Governor Healey's administration cut residential electricity rates by 25 percent and gas rates by 10 percent for usage in February and March 2026, funded in part by $180 million in state relief funds, with no interest or carrying charges added to recoup the cost later (Mass.gov).

Across all of these efforts, a pattern emerges: state and multi-state action has moved quickly to deliver measurable savings largely by targeting the wholesale market and data center cost allocation directly, rather than waiting on a broader national fix.

What's Still Ahead

At the federal level, a notable proposal now in play is the Energy Bills Relief Act (H.R. 7977), introduced by Reps. Sean Casten (IL) and Mike Levin (CA) and currently backed by 124 House Democrats (SEEC): the bill would expand energy assistance and weatherization programs, require large new energy users including data centers to pay a greater share of grid upgrade costs, and restore clean energy tax incentives with the goal of bringing more low-cost generation online faster (SEEC). The draft legislation has drawn public support from a wide range of environmental, consumer, and labor groups, though as of now it hasn't attracted Republican co-sponsors, so its path to passage remains uncertain. Enforcement of the Ratepayer Protection Pledge at the federal level is also just getting underway, and it remains to be seen how consistently it holds as more data center capacity comes online.

At the state level, the momentum appears more durable but still incomplete. Pennsylvania's PJM price cap is already scheduled to expire before the May 2027 capacity auction, and Governor Shapiro has been explicit that the current settlement is a bridge, not a permanent fix (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). In Massachusetts, the legislature is still negotiating Governor Healey's broader Energy Affordability, Innovation and Independence Act, which would extend relief beyond the two-month rate cut already in place (Mass.gov).

Taken together, what's forming is less a single national fix than a patchwork of competing approaches. Analysts still expect rates to keep climbing through the rest of the decade regardless of which of these efforts gains traction, which means the underlying cost pressure on ratepayers isn't going away on its own — and property owners will likely need to keep managing around it rather than waiting for it to resolve.

What This Means for EV Charging

Why Chargers Can't Be Managed on Their Own

Rising rates, a variety of policy responses, and no clear near-term fix puts new pressure on a decision property owners are increasingly having to make: how to add EV charging without adding another unmanaged cost to the building's energy bill.

When EVs charge as soon as they're plugged in without coordination, costs stack up when charging happens during peak pricing hours, buildings can trigger demand charges by drawing more power at once than their existing electrical infrastructure was built for, and that overload often forces expensive equipment upgrades just to keep the system from tripping (Department of Energy).

Managed charging exists to solve this issue by coordinating when and how each vehicle charges relative to the building's overall energy use (Department of Energy). In practice, that means charging sessions can be shifted to avoid a building's peak demand periods, power can be capped across multiple chargers so the property doesn't need to upgrade its electrical service just to support them, and the whole system can respond to changing conditions, like a utility's time-of-use pricing or a spike in building-wide demand.

What Multifamily Building Owners Can Do to Cut Energy Costs Now: The Case for a Building-Wide System

This is why EV charging can't be treated as a standalone amenity, especially now, particularly in older multifamily buildings where the electrical infrastructure wasn't designed with EV load in mind. With electricity rates already climbing and volatile, uncoordinated charging doesn't only risk equipment strain, but also risks turning EV charging into one of the least predictable costs on the property's utility bill.

The properties that get ahead of this are treating chargers as one part of a coordinated building energy system, not a separate add-on bolted onto the parking lot. This includes charging infrastructure that's networked and monitored, that can shift load away from a building's peak demand periods automatically, and that gives owners and housing authorities visibility into usage and cost in real time rather than finding out at the end of the billing cycle.

The Takeaway

Energy affordability is going to stay a live issue nationally through the rest of 2026, with federal debate ongoing and state level fixes only partially closing the gap. New England, given its especially high rates, has extra reason to move quickly. The properties that come out ahead won't be the ones that waited for a national fix — they'll be the ones that acted while the tools to manage costs, from funding programs to smarter charging systems, were still available to them. Choose EVSE systems that integrate with your building, such as those Matcha provides.