Americans using gas stoves to cook during the holidays, or any other meal in the near future, are set for persistently higher bills, with the price of gas expected to keep rising into next year.
US households will pay 4% more for gas power this year, on average, compared with 2024, with the industrial and power plant sectors experiencing a much higher price rise, a recent analysis from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has found.
The cost of gas piped into people’s homes rose by 11.7% in September, compared with a year previously, a higher rate of inflation than in any other area measured by the federal government, such as food, medical care and clothing.
A line chart showing that the household gas prices are expected to rise 4%
Power bills of all kinds have soared for many Americans this year, despite Donald Trump promising that “starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again.” The president had vowed to cut Americans’ energy costs in half within his first year in office.
This timeline may now be stretched somewhat, according to Chris Wright, the US energy secretary. “I think we will soon see a stop in the rise of electricity prices, we’re going to achieve that, I think, hopefully in the first half of 2026,” Wright told Fox News on Monday.
The high cost of gas, which is used in about half of American homes, is due to a variety of factors, analysts say. Extreme weather events, the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising costs faced by suppliers have all had knock-on effects in upping prices for US households.
“Residential prices are rising, they are really high right now,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “For people who depend on gas for heating their homes, they’re likely to have higher bills and not just this winter time. This may be something that lasts for a while and will be a severe economic crimp for lower-income families.”
But a key accelerator of gas prices in the years ahead will probably be Trump’s enthusiastic push to export gas drilled in the US as chilled liquified natural gas (LNG). Under Joe Biden, the US paused exports of LNG, with the Department of Energy finding that greater exports will raise gas costs for American households.
Trump ended this pause, however, and has issued export permits for four new terminals that will ship LNG around the world. The US is the world’s leading exporter of LNG and now ships about 15 bn cubic feet a day of gas, a 25% increase on last year’s levels.
It will take several years to construct the planned LNG export terminal but problems already exist within the fleet, with every fully operational LNG terminal in the US violating federal pollution limits in recent years. Gas is a fossil fuel that dangerously heats the world when burned and, when shipping and processing is accounted for, is thought to be even more polluting than coal.
According to the EIA, this export boom will take a significant toll next year, with the wholesale gas price spiraling 16% higher than in 2025 “primarily due to increased liquified natural gas (LNG) exports amid flat production growth”.
Williams-Derry said that the fossil fuel industry had an “expressed purpose” to raise the price of gas in the US via LNG exports. “So you’re going to see a long-term increase in prices,” he said. “But we’re also going to see injections of volatility, price spikes, like we’re seeing right now, into the US gas system. We are now exporting LNG and we’re importing volatility in higher prices as a result.”
The rising price of gas and electricity comes amid a host of other worsening costs Americans are facing due to the climate crisis. Home insurance rates are rocketing in many parts of the country, amid an onslaught of severe weather impacts, with Realtor.com recently finding that premiums could surge by another 16%, on average, by 2027.
Flooding, meanwhile, is also set to become a larger financial liability for households. In the past decade, more than $45bn in flood damages a year, on average, has been inflicted upon American communities, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that this cost could rise by as much as a third within the next 30 years.
The Department of Energy was contacted about the rising cost of gas but did not respond.