Mapping Electricity Prices Across the Country, with Zehra Khan and Lauren Sidner

Notable Quotes

• Understanding the problem of electricity prices starts with usable information: “The electricity system is incredibly fragmented, and the data on it follows suit. We have thousands of utilities; dozens of state regulators and regional grid operators; and then on top of that, a smattering of different rate structures across the country. And so, the information ecosystem on electricity prices and bills reflects that fragmentation.” —Zehra Khan (5:19)
• Different stories, same results across US utilities: “There isn’t one national story about electricity prices, other than they are rising in pretty much every pocket of the country. What the data shows is that electricity prices are rising for very different reasons in different parts of the country.” —Zehra Khan (8:28)
• Data centers make an impact, even before they’re built: “The pace at which [data center investment] has been taking place in recent years has been driving up the cost of certain equipment in the sector, straining the supply for things like gas turbines and transformers. Utilities investing in related projects have to pay more than they would’ve five years ago for those inputs, and that added cost shows up in consumer rates, whether or not the underlying project is data center related.” —Lauren Sidner (12:58)
• State regulators are crucial in finding solutions: “Regulators should push for much more transparency in the standard offer service rates. We should be able to measure how much of total cost is attributable to capacity prices, energy procurement, administrative costs, and compliance with the renewable portfolio standard. We should be able to understand how much those things have added to growth in recent years and why. Without that, policymakers can’t start to design effective fixes.” —Lauren Sidner (24:57)

Top of the Stack

• “How to Fix the Fastest-Rising Electricity Prices in the United States” by Zehra Khan, Lauren Sidner, and Steven Berit
• Electricity Price Hub data tool from Heatmap News, MIT, and CleanEcon
• “The Affordability and Climate Agendas Run Through State Regulators. It’s Time to Rethink Their Roles.” by Arjun Krishnaswami and Megan Husted
• The Kyoichiro Kaga series of mystery novels by Keigo Higashino
• “A Bad, Bad Place” by Frances Crawford

The Full Transcript

Kristin Hayes: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future (RFF). I’m your host, Kristin Hayes.

Today, I have two guests joining me to talk about one of the big topics du jour, which is US electricity prices and how they’ve been changing in recent years. There have been a number of studies attempting to parse out what’s led to electricity price increases in various parts of the country, and it’s a complicated tale with lots of regional variation and subtlety, which means the story can seem confusing at best and contradictory at worst.

Zehra Khan and Lauren Sidner are both part of a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Clean Economy Project (CleanEcon) that has been working with Heatmap News on something called the Electricity Price Hub, which aims to shed additional light on this complex topic. We’ll talk about what the Hub is all about and what they’ve learned in putting it together, so stay with us.

Hi, Zehra and Lauren, and welcome to Resources Radio. It’s really nice to talk with you.

Lauren Sidner: Hi, Kristin. Thanks so much for having us.

Zehra Khan: It’s great to be here.

Kristin Hayes: Great. Well, I gave you a super short introduction, but would really love to hear from you both and give you a chance to introduce yourselves to our listeners. So Zehra, why don’t I start with you?

Zehra Khan: Sure. First, thanks so much for having us on. We’re really excited to chat about the Electricity Price Hub and other related things.

I spent the bulk of my career in government, working on economic policy from a couple different vantage points. I started out in the Biden administration working at the Council of Economic Advisers. It was a very volatile time; the post-pandemic recovery effort was underway, and I got to be there as we were building the economic case for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. For the second half of the administration, I went to the Federal Trade Commission, where I got the chance to work for Chair Lina Khan, helping her advance and implement an ambitious agenda that challenged longstanding assumptions about competition and consumer protection.

And for the last 10 or so months, I’ve worked on a small team at CleanEcon and MIT to build an ambitious effort to put together the missing public data infrastructure in energy and economic policy. We’re excited to talk about our latest project, the Electricity Price Hub, today.

Kristin Hayes: That’s awesome. Lauren, what about you?

Lauren Sidner: Yeah, thanks. It’s really great to be here, and thanks for highlighting this project, which the team is really excited about.

So, like Zehra, I come to this team from government. I was at the State Department, in the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate office, where I worked on a range of issues relating to international climate finance. I, before that, worked on similar topics from a think tank here in DC, and my training is in environmental law. So, that’s my background.

I’ve been part of this team for a little over a year now. And like Zehra said, we work on a range of issues relating to climate and clean energy, but from the perspective of key data gaps that are holding back policy discussions on these topics. It’s been really fascinating and fun to come at a similar set of issues but from a different angle with, lately, electricity prices being front and center for our work, but other projects that we’ve worked on, as well.

Kristin Hayes: This is fascinating, because you two have already given me a hint at the answer to the next question. One of the things that I wanted to ask about just at the outset was, why build the Electricity Price Hub? It sounds like part of the mission of what you both are working on now is around data gaps that can inform decisions, and I’m guessing that’s part of it.

But Zehra, let me ask you, why build the Electricity Price Hub? And maybe my second piece of that question is, Why now?

Zehra Khan: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think one thing that surprises people is that, despite how much attention electricity prices get, our understanding of what’s actually happening has been remarkably limited. Answering the basic question of, “What do I pay for electricity, and how does that compare to a neighboring community or a neighboring state?” is actually much harder to answer than you would expect, and it’s a big transparency problem.

I think about gasoline prices. I think we all take for granted that you can essentially open an app like GasBuddy and see what people are paying today, and it gets updated on an almost hour-by-hour basis. Electricity is almost the exact opposite. It’s probably the least transparent major household expense. And if you wanted information on it, you were looking at data that was anywhere from 3 months old to 21 months old.

The challenge isn’t that there’s no data. It’s that the electricity system is incredibly fragmented, and the data on it follows suit. We have thousands of utilities, dozens of state regulators and regional grid operators, and then on top of that, a smattering of different rate structures across the country. And so, the information ecosystem on electricity prices and bills reflects that fragmentation. It’s spread across hundreds of sources, reported differently depending on the utility or state, and it often, for that reason, is not directly comparable. So, before you even get to analyzing trends, you have to solve a major data infrastructure problem. That was the question that we asked when we set out to build the Hub.

The Electricity Price Hub was designed to solve a lot of that. I want to give a plug to our wonderfully brilliant colleague, Steven Berit, who is at the helm of this work as well. We built it with Heatmap News, which has been a wonderful distribution partner for our work. And we built it to make electricity price data more timely, more geographically specific, and more transparent. It essentially provides a breakdown of household rates and bills, broken down into their core components, all the way down to the utility service–territory level.

And that matters, because if we aren’t all operating from the same common factual foundation, there are convenient political villains that can fill the void, and we end up having a conversation that obscures key differences within and across states. We really designed the tool to be useful across a wide range of audiences: Reporters, who can use it to ground stories in what’s happening locally. Policymakers can use it, of course, to better understand the challenges facing their constituents. Researchers and advocates can do the same—study patterns across utilities and states.

Kristin Hayes: As I mentioned in my intro, this is a great moment to be providing this level of transparency, because there really is a focus these days on electricity prices and how they’re changing, and in many locations going up. People are concerned about rate hikes. There’s this flurry of competing or conflicting information, so it does seem like this is a really good moment to infuse more data into the conversation.

So, I’m really curious about … This is a super broad question, but I’m going to ask you to give it a try. Very broadly speaking, what did putting together the Electricity Price Hub teach you about what is driving electricity prices in various parts of the country?

Zehra Khan: Yeah. That’s sort of the big kahuna question.

Kristin Hayes: Right. “Describe the whole thing to me in one sentence.”

Zehra Khan: The biggest takeaway in building the Hub is that there isn’t one national story about electricity prices, other than they are rising in pretty much every pocket of the country. One of the motivations behind building the Hub was to move beyond broad narratives and really drill down, and what the data showed is that electricity prices are rising for very different reasons in different parts of the country.

In parts of New England, particularly Maine, you’ll see distribution costs have been a major source of bill increases. Utilities are spending more to maintain and replace aging infrastructure, and the rising cost of construction and equipment is compounding that. In states like Florida, you’ll see extreme weather become an increasingly important driver. That shows up in charges called “storm recovery costs” that were once minimal, but are now showing up as a meaningful line item in customer bills.

But then, you go to parts of the Mid-Atlantic, and the story looks completely different. Bottlenecks in adding new capacity to the grid, as well as an uptick in power demand—driven, of course, by data centers, at least in part—are causing generation costs to rise. And in New Jersey, for example, the utility, Atlantic City Electric, has increased their generation-related charges by more than 50 percent year over year.

So, it’s interesting to see all of this information laid out in an “apples to apples” way that lets you understand what’s happening and deduce trends.

Kristin Hayes: Zehra, you mentioned there are some overarching narratives, if I can use that term, that have definitely taken an outsized influence in this conversation. And Lauren, maybe I can turn to you. One of those narratives is that it’s about data centers, and that data centers and AI [artificial intelligence]-driven demand are playing a big role in these electricity price increases.

So, maybe I can ask you to parse that out a little bit, or talk in more depth about how much of this national price story is really about AI infrastructure versus other factors like the ones that Zehra mentioned around grid investment, fuel costs, and policies. Just help me think through the AI piece of this a little bit more.

Lauren Sidner: Like Zehra said, there are all these factors that together have been driving up costs in the sector and translating into rising rates over many years. The relative weight of those factors varies from place to place.

Based on the broader discussion around this topic, you might think that all or most of those factors can be traced back to data center load growth. But that’s really just not the case, at least to date. Things like rising distribution spending brought on by a need to replace aging infrastructure, or to replace equipment that’s been damaged by storms, or spending to mitigate wildfire risk—obviously, those things aren’t tied to data center demand, and they have been a major factor in trends, at least in some parts of the country.

But that said, there are some standout examples of the ways that data center demand is driving up prices in recent years. Probably the clearest example of that is in parts of the PJM [Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland Interconnection] region where—not even data center build-out today—the projected demand driven by data centers produced a very sharp increase in PJM capacity prices. And that showed up in rates in places like Pennsylvania and Maryland, New Jersey, [Washington] DC, beginning in 2025, basically. It was a combination of this explosion in projected load and the painfully slow pace at which the region has been adding new capacity to the grid that drove up those prices.

And then, beyond the PJM region, we also know that data center investment and the pace at which that’s been taking place in recent years has been driving up the cost of certain equipment in the sector, straining the supply for that equipment: things like gas turbines, transformers. And so, utilities investing in related projects have to pay more than maybe they would’ve five years ago for those inputs, and that added cost, of course, shows up in consumer rates, whether or not the underlying project is data center related.

And then, kind of connected to that, we also know that utilities across the country are accelerating their capital spending, especially investments in new generation, but also, in some places, in new transmission. A lot of that increase is tied at least in part, if not in large part, to projected load growth. Under business as usual or long-standing cost allocation, that spending would eventually increase rates for all customers. It may already be showing up in rate increases in some places in the last year or so, and it could impact rates going forward in a big way if regulators and policymakers don’t carefully guard against it.

So, I think it’s a bit of a mixed story. It’s not nearly as straightforward as the narrative might lead you to believe. It’s definitely there, it definitely could be a huge factor going forward, and it’s complicated, I guess is the short version.

Kristin Hayes: Yes, that definitely sums up electricity markets in general, from what I can tell. I really appreciate you talking through, again, some of the subtleties there, because I think it’s important, this message of: It is complicated. It’s a factor. It is much more of a factor in certain places than others, but in the future, it is definitely something that seems to be on the rise, and, as you said, something that decisionmakers need to be paying attention to. So, that’s great. Thank you.

I’m going to pivot a little bit. Honestly, one of the aspects of the Hub that I found most intriguing, and frankly spent quite a bit of time playing around with, was the ability to look at ZIP code–level data. I’m going to show my nerdiness here, but I really found myself fascinated with the ZIP code–level data because frankly, it’s a level of granularity that I don’t think about. I think about electricity prices as hyperlocal, as in, “What am I paying?” Or if I do think about them, I’m thinking about them at the state or regional level, or some of these national-level narratives. But there’s some fascinating stuff when you look at these other granularity levels.

Zehra, maybe I can go back to you, and I’m going to talk through one specific case, and I’d love to ask you to explain it to me.

All right, so here we go. So, there’s a ZIP code, 16137, in Pennsylvania. It’s on the border with Ohio, so on the far western part of the state. And from my reading of the map, it looks like they might have average power bills that are about $200 a month. So, in ZIP code 18347, in the northeastern part of the state, they’re nearly $60 per month cheaper. That’s a pretty big difference. Same state. And the difference is even more stark in some other places, like ZIP codes in northern versus southern Indiana.

So, indulge my nerdiness for a second. Can you talk through what might lead to some of those differences between ZIP codes in the same state?

Zehra Khan: Well, let me first say I share your excitement on nerding out on this. It’s very, very cool, and one part of the Hub that we find very exciting.

So, when you compare those two Pennsylvania ZIP codes, you’re really comparing two different systems. The ZIP code near the Ohio borders might be served by a different utility than the one in northeastern Pennsylvania, with different infrastructure costs, generation sources, rate structures—layer on differences, if minor, in climate or home size or energy efficiency, and you can end up in a situation where all of those factors compound into bill differences of $50 or $60 or more a month.

I also want to spotlight one thing that we found surprising about the data that shows up on a ZIP code level too: Looking at the data, you can see that volatility is a huge issue. The median difference between the highest and lowest bills in 2025, for instance, was $92. That’s a 91 percent difference, roughly. And then, if you zoom in on a subset of utilities with the greatest bill volatility, which we did do, peak-to-trough differences in bills often exceed $200, with even greater percentage swings.

So, it’s very interesting to see volatility at the sub-state level. That’s definitely a challenge for family budgets that require planning and value predictability, but it’s also a challenge for—I’m going to zoom out for a second—electrification more broadly. It’s much harder to encourage people to switch to electric technologies if they feel like they can’t predict what their bill will look like.

Kristin Hayes: Yeah. Zehra, can I ask a quick follow-up question? Have you seen any evidence that these differences lead to any change in … Well, you mentioned electrification, so there’s potentially one influence on consumer behavior, but do they actually change where people decide to live, or is that part of this lack of transparency, where people wouldn’t even have the information to do that? I am so curious now.

Zehra Khan: I mean, I don’t know if I have the answer to that question. I think what I know … This sort of gets at place-based policies and why I think they’re so important. It’s sticky where people live, and I think that a whole host of factors drives those decisions. Once a family, for instance, makes a decision to live somewhere, it might take a lot to compel them to move to a different ZIP code.

And so while, of course, electricity prices are becoming one of the highest and most volatile line items on a family budget, I think that there’s a lot more that you have to look at if you’re thinking about how that influences where folks move and the decisions that go into that. I don’t know if I answered your question.

Kristin Hayes: You did, yeah. It’s just something that I’m thinking about: Does access to data actually change behavior? And you’re right. Obviously, where people live is so sticky and so dependent on so many things, but I am curious if we’re starting to see some evidence that this volatility and these levels of difference might actually change some of those decisions.

Well, Lauren, let me turn back to you. I came across your work first via a piece in Heatmap that was actually about the District of Columbia, which piqued my interest because it’s where I live. And you noted that DC earned the “unwelcome distinction” of having the largest one-year electricity price jump of any “state”—I’m going to put that in quotes, I know we’re not actually a state—but of any state in the country. So, that was up 26 percent in a year and 87 percent over five years.

And so, Lauren, I’d love to talk about our hometown for a minute here. What factors are driving the increases here? And maybe more importantly, how many of them are things that are actually under the district’s control, or not?

Lauren Sidner: The first thing to note is that that article captured the “state of play” in the data in May, but that was by no means a blip. DC continues to stand out in the data. If we look at numbers for July, DC still has some of the fastest one-year growth rates of any state or semi-state. So, if you look at, specifically, the change in a 12-month trailing average from July 2025 to July 2026, DC’s average price is still growing the fastest of any other state, at nearly a 22 percent increase. And its average bill is the second-fastest one-year growth, up 17 percent in 12 months. And important context there: over 5 years, the rate is up almost 92 percent, so it’s not just a problem in the last year or so. That’s added almost $60 per month to the average household bill.

So, to your question, looking beneath those trends at what’s driving rate increases, the very clear dominant driver, especially in the very recent growth, has been growth in generation-related charges. A bit of context: Pepco, the investor-owned utility that serves DC, doesn’t own generation assets. It procures power from suppliers in a competitive auction to then provide the default supply service to DC customers, which it calls its “standard offer service.” The generation portion of those standard offer service rates are up almost 130 percent over 5 years and almost 30 percent in just the last 12 months. And that’s primarily a function of what we talked about before: rising capacity prices and also wholesale energy costs in the PJM market. To your question earlier about how much is within control of local policymakers; there is a regional dynamic at play here, but the growth in those rates over the last year accounts for almost 80 percent of the total one-year growth in Pepco’s rates, so clearly, it’s the primary factor at play.

But I wouldn’t want to lose sight of—it’s important to remember that the distribution-related charges are also adding to those trends. So, if you think about a typical bill, distribution-related charges tend to contribute a little more than 30 percent of the total bill. And that set of charges is up more than 60 percent over five years. So still, an important factor here, and particularly important for the DC regulator to bear in mind, since that is squarely within its jurisdiction.

Kristin Hayes: If I can continue to use DC as a teachable moment here for just a second, based on the DC experience, what are your recommendations about what jurisdictions should be scrutinizing as rates continue to climb? They have factors that are under their control, factors that aren’t, but there is some leverage that regulators have, and that shows up in various ways.

So, what should they really be looking at, asking questions around, or trying to scrutinize as best they can to try to keep rate increases under control?

Lauren Sidner: So, in places like DC, where the regulator doesn’t exercise complete control over electricity supply, that doesn’t mean that they should just wash their hands of it. We’ve seen a lot of claims from the Public Service Commission and also the utility here, things like, “We don’t control that portion of the bill,” that sort of claim. But just because they can’t solve the whole problem doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything they can do to bring some relief and to at least help identify solutions.

So, as a starting point, the regulators should still push for much more transparency in the standard offer service rates. We should be able to understand and measure how much of total cost is attributable to capacity prices, energy procurement—all of the things that go into it—administrative costs, compliance with the renewable portfolio standard. We should be able to measure those things and understand how much they’ve added to growth in recent years and why. Without that, policymakers can’t start to design effective fixes.

And then, local policymakers should also be looking at ways to limit demand, or to make it easier and much more cost-effective for customers to generate their own supply to buffer their exposure to these very high costs. So, reforms to cut interconnection fees and timelines for rooftop solar, more aggressive demand response programs, incentives for battery storage, that sort of thing, should be front of mind for local policymakers, given the strain that this has caused. That’s on the supply side, where there’s more limited jurisdiction or control, but still things that can be done.

On the delivery side, regulators everywhere should aggressively scrutinize distribution costs. They should require utilities to justify every dollar of revenue requested and explain why it’s needed in a clear and easy-to-understand way. Explain what alternatives they thought about, why they rejected them, show how the proposed spending very specifically will benefit customers in that place. That’s just not happening today in DC, nor a lot of other places.

Kristin Hayes: Interesting. Well, Lauren, one last question for you, which pulls the threads of our conversation together. We talked about DC. Obviously, we spent the beginning of the conversation talking about the Electricity Price Hub overall. If I’m reading the Electricity Price Hub map correctly … We’ve talked about DC having the largest percentage increases, but I read it as the fact that we actually started from a lower base. And so, overall, average monthly power bills in the district are still relatively low compared to other parts of the country.

First of all, feel free to check me if I’m interpreting that incorrectly. And then, if that is the case, does that pattern actually hold in other parts of the country, where these places that had lower baselines have actually seen larger increases, and why would that be the case, if so? Lots of questions there, but I’m curious about how these threads come together.

Lauren Sidner: It’s a really good question, and it’s not something that we’ve done an across-the-board survey of. We have noticed that there are, looking across the states, states that have seen a very steady rise in prices over a five-year period, some states that have been fairly moderate and then had very rapid recent growth, and then other states where growth in rates has trended with inflation. We’ve seen different patterns, like you described. It’s an interesting question and maybe something that we should dig into more.

First, starting with DC, you’re right. It has had some of the fastest growth in rates over the last year. And so, today—our most recent data is for July—it has, of any state, the 13th-highest price, but only the 35th-highest average bill for the month out of 51. So, I think that’s a fair characterization. DC’s average rate was below the national average price until early 2025. And then, with recent growth, it’s surpassed that and outpaced national average growth. But it’s really because average household usage in the District is below the national average that bills still aren’t among the highest in the country, so that accounts for that difference.

I don’t think that pattern necessarily holds, though. I can think of at least some examples of places that have also seen this rapid recent growth in rates where bills are very high and remain very high. New Jersey, for example: rates have grown really fast in the last 12 months there, as well. And in July, its average bill is the second-highest of any state. So, not quite the same story there.

Hawaii also comes to mind, especially with recent developments and fuel volatility in the global oil price, which impacts their cost of fuel. They have seen very rapid growth, specifically in 2026 so far, but they have had, for some time, some of the highest bills in the country. So, different patterns—I think we could think about different typologies here, of trends. And so, unfortunately, no, it’s not the case that the places that have seen the biggest change are also maintaining relatively low bills.

Kristin Hayes: Interesting. This is such a good reminder—you used the word “story” in your answer, and I think that’s what I love about this map so much, is that there are thousands of tiny stories baked into it. Thank you for sharing and talking through some of those stories with me today—obviously, my own story here in DC, but also the broader set of stories. I really encourage all of our listeners to take a look and just play around. It’s a super fun tool to just explore.

So, thank you to you both, and we’ll close with our regular Top of the Stack. I would love to turn it over to you to recommend some more good content for our listeners, related to electricity prices or not. Zehra, let me start with you. What’s on the top of your stack?

Zehra Khan: Well, one piece I found especially interesting recently is a piece the Federation of American Scientists released that essentially takes a look at whether state public utilities commissions [PUCs] are fit for purpose and whether they have the authority, capacity, and tools to implement modern-day affordability and climate agendas.

The piece looks at PUCs’ history and how they were originally built to review utility rate cases, but today, they’re expected to do a lot more. They’re expected to navigate AI-driven electricity demand. They’re expected to oversee electrification and grid modernization and answer to data center growth. And a lot of that has happened without fundamentally changing how they’re staffed or how they operate.

That mismatch really resonated with me, because it goes back to a broader lesson about state capacity and is a good reminder—and this is for PUCs, but also for government more broadly—that modernizing our institutions is upstream to addressing larger policy challenges, like, for instance, modernizing the grid itself.

Kristin Hayes: Fascinating. And Lauren, what about you?

Lauren Sidner: Sure. To start, I also can’t say enough good things about the work that the Federation of American Scientists is doing on PUC capacity questions. Working on the Electricity Price Hub has really driven home the importance of having strong state institutions, both commissions and consumer advocates, playing a role here. So, I guess, double click on Zehra’s answer.

But the more honest answer, or the real answer, is that lately, between everything—the news, having small kids—outside of work, at least, I really can’t handle anything too serious. But I’m also a bit of an insomniac, so I read a lot of mysteries.

Kristin Hayes: Okay.

Lauren Sidner: Yeah. So, I guess a bit of electricity prices, and then some mysteries on the side.

Kristin Hayes: Awesome. Any particular mystery that you’ve been enjoying that you’d want to recommend?

Lauren Sidner: Yeah, most recently I’ve been reading one of the Keigo Higashino detective series, which is a fun read. I also recently finished a book called A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford that was really fun. If there are any mystery fans out there, lots of good recent books.

Kristin Hayes: Great. Well, thank you both so much. Really informative. I really appreciate your time and look forward to hearing more.

Zehra Khan: Thanks so much.

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