"Gas prices" have been a key political metric in the United States for decades.
But as Fortune recently reported, what pundits so often called "pain at the pump" is becoming a distant memory amid skyrocketing energy costs nationwide.
What's happening?
Electricity bills are out of control in 2025, which most American ratepayers know firsthand.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gas prices hovered between $3.02 and $3.06 per gallon in November, effectively flat year over year.
The specter of gas prices seemed to vanish overnight as a consumer confidence indicator, absent from cable news segments and pundit roundtables.
If Americans endured any proverbial pain at the pump in 2025, that discomfort was almost certainly eclipsed by malaise at the mailbox, as rate increases doubled or tripled in some states.
During a series of state-level elections on Nov. 4, energy costs prompted a shock upset in Georgia, where angry constituents ousted utility officials, The New York Times reported.
Patrick De Haan is a consumer energy pricing expert for the platform GasBuddy. He explained that gas prices served as an easy-to-track consumer-side metric, unlike the kilowatt-hour (kWh) units to which ratepayers historically paid little attention.
He predicted the birth of a new economic barometer.
"Electricity bills are a lot more of a talking point now than filling up the tank because they're becoming a lot more painful," De Haan said, adding that "electricity prices have really gone up and probably aren't going to slow down anytime soon."
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Yes 👍 Why are rising electricity bills concerning?
Experts and policy analysts have raised myriad concerns as electric bills continued rising in 2025, citing everything from household budgets to public health.
In June, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander warned that 30% of New Yorkers were "energy insecure," meaning they were unable to keep up with gas and electric bills. Overall, 42% of residents had fallen into arrears over the past five years, and nearly a quarter endured shutoffs.
"People's lives are at stake every year. We lose more lives to heat than any other climate catastrophe," Lander said.
"Hundreds of New Yorkers have already died from heat emergencies from heat stroke, and if people can't afford their air conditioning, then many more will die," he added.
More recently, the Texas-based electricity company Payless Power found that 52% of low-income households admitted to forgoing food due to high electricity bills.
What's being done about it?
In a double blow to the clean energy transition, the federal government abruptly withdrew from in-progress renewable energy projects and obliterated credits and subsidies in 2025.
Recently, 20 states joined forces and filed suit against the government to unfreeze the Solar For All project, as installing solar panels can reduce electricity bills to $0 or even lower.
In late October, dozens of lawmakers implored utility providers to suspend shutoffs due to ongoing economic volatility.
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