The Real Reasons Power Prices Are Surging

Current conditions: Snow is returning to the Upper Midwest, with as much as a foot set to dump on Duluth, Minnesota • Crater Lake National Park in Oregon just registered the lowest snow water equivalent ever recorded for this time of year • Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa and the United States’ southernmost city, is weathering days of intense thunderstorms.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Introducing Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub

Big news from over here at Heatmap: Today, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and CleanEcon, we launched the Electricity Price Hub, a new public data platform that provides monthly, utility-level estimates of residential electricity rates and bills across the United States going back to 2021, broken down by generation, transmission, and distribution costs.

To kick off the new feature, we have:

• Jeva Lange on why “everything else” beyond generation and distribution — things like charges for taxes, regulatory fees, insurance, payroll, and pensions, in addition to electrification and environment programs — are driving up electricity bills by nearly 15% across the 132 utilities in our dataset with complete cost breakdowns.
• Robinson Meyer on how the data platform works and what trends it shows via latest episode of Heatmap’as Shift Key podcast, with MIT’s Brian Deese and Lauren Sidner.
• Matthew Zeitlin on why rate hikes hit differently in Virginia.
• Emily Pontecorvo on why lower electricity prices might not yield lower electric bills.

2. Residential electricity costs as a fraction of personal spending hit an all-time low

LBL

Total residential electricity costs as a fraction of personal expenditure came out to 1.25%, according to new data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That would be near an all-time low, but slightly above 2024 levels. Total residential electricity costs as a fraction of total income was also near an all-time low, at 1%. Once again, that metric was also flat in recent years with a slight increase in 2025.

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3. EU urges Europeans to drive and fly less amid energy shock

Last week, Slovenia became the first European Union nation to introduce fuel rationing amid the energy shock from the Iran War. Now the European Commission has begun urging Europeans to work from home and drive and fly less. Brussels’ top governing body also pressed countries across the bloc to speed up construction of renewables. “Even if … peace is here tomorrow, still we will not go back to normal in the foreseeable future,” Dan Jorgensen, the EU’s energy chief, said in a speech to the energy ministers from all 27 nations, according to Politico.

4. Trump’s ‘God Squad’ condemns animals to possible extinction

On Tuesday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum assembled the so-called “God Squad,” a rarely-used committee with the authority to waive Endangered Species Act protections under exceptional circumstances. In this case, Burgum gathered the panel to exempt federally-permitted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the landmark conservation law on national security grounds. The move came in response to a request from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “It took the Trump administration 15 minutes to wipe our crucial environmental safeguards in the Gulf of Mexico,” Jimmy Tobias and Chris D’Angelo wrote in the conservation newsletter Public Domain yesterday. “It took them 15 minutes to condemn an endangered animal to possible extinction. It took them 15 minutes to play God.”

The Trump administration has previously given credence to species conservation arguments against wind energy, both onshore and off. As my colleague Jael Holzman has covered, the administration has used laws protecting eagles to extract information and fines from wind farms, and has appeared to follow a playbook laid out by anti-offshore wind activist groups that includes leveraging marine species protections to block development.

5. GM idles its billion-dollar Factory Zero electric vehicle plant in Detroit again

General Motors has once again idled production at its Factory Zero electric vehicle plant in Detroit as demand wanes. The move comes less than three months after a mass layoff and reduction to a single shift, Automotive Newsreported. The facility was part of a $2.2 billion investment in 2021 to manufacture the GMC Hummer EV and Sierra EV, the Chevrolet Silverado EV, and the Cadillac Escalade IQ electric SUV. The latest temporary layoff impacts 1,300 workers, who were told to stay home starting March 16 and return to work on April 13, the United Auto Workers told InsideEVs.

THE KICKER

Just a few years ago, you’d be mistaken for thinking this was an April Fool’s Day joke: New England is going atomic. The governors of all six states signed onto a statement Tuesday outlining steps for what they said is to “strengthen the region’s energy reliability, affordability, and long-term supply” of electricity. “New England has a long tradition of collaborating on regional energy matters. As governors, we are committed to safeguarding our collective energy future through advancement of a diverse energy strategy that includes nuclear power, a pillar of New England’s electric system,” the governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont wrote.