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Utilities requested $18.6 billion in electric and gas rate increases during the first half of this year, according to an analysis by the nonprofit watchdog PowerLines today.
That’s in addition to the already record-breaking $31 billion in rate hikes requested in 2025, and the $15 billion in 2024 — some of which has shown up in customers’ bills. State utility regulators tend to approve the majority of the costs, including 58% between 2023 through 2024, PowerLines found. Nearly half of the requests from 2025 were still pending at the start of this year.
The latest filings come despite mounting pressure from White House, state governors, and customers to keep energy bills down, especially as hyperscalers race to power their data centers for artificial intelligence. The White House is planning to expand its voluntary “ratepayer protection pledge” to utilities in the coming weeks, Reuters reported. But it’s unclear whether that will have any impact on rate increase requests.
Hyperscalers including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and three other companies initially signed the pledge in March. They promised to pay for building new power and other grid infrastructure to serve data centers, as well as negotiate special tariffs with utilities and state governments to cover the costs. At least 25 utilities already had these tariffs on the books last year, with more being filed this year, according to a Latitude Intelligence analysis.
