Cooking with gas gets more expensive as Americans face rising prices into 2026 | US news

Americans who use gas stoves to cook during the holidays, or for any other meal in the near future, will face consistently higher bills as the price of gas is expected to continue to rise next year.

U.S. households will pay 4% more on average for gas-fired electricity this year than in 2024, with the industrial and power plant sectors seeing much larger price increases, according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The cost of gas delivered to homes rose 11.7 percent in September from a year earlier, a higher rate of inflation than in any other area measured by the federal government, such as food, medical care and clothing.

Electric bills of all kinds have skyrocketed for many Americans this year, despite Donald Trump’s promise that “on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again.” The president pledged to cut Americans’ energy costs in half during his first year in office.

This timetable could now be extended somewhat, according to Chris Wright, the US Secretary of Energy. “I think we’ll soon see a halt to the rise in electricity prices, we’ll get there, I think, I hope, 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 aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising costs faced by suppliers have all impacted rising prices for American households.

“Residential prices are going up, they’re very high right now,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “For people who rely on gas to heat their homes, they’re likely to have higher bills and not just this winter. This could last for some time and would constitute a serious economic handicap for low-income families.”

But a key accelerator of gas prices in the coming years will likely be Trump’s enthusiastic push to export U.S.-mined gas as refrigerated liquefied natural gas (LNG). Under Joe Biden, the United States suspended LNG exports as the Department of Energy estimated that larger exports would increase gas costs for American households.

Trump, however, ended that pause and issued export permits for four new terminals that will ship LNG around the world. The United States is the world’s largest exporter of LNG and now ships about 15 billion cubic feet of gas per day, a 25% increase over last year’s levels.

It will take several years to build the planned LNG export terminal, but problems already exist within the fleet, with every fully operational LNG terminal in the United States violating federal pollution limits in recent years. Gas is a fossil fuel that dangerously warms the planet when burned and, when transport and processing is taken into account, is thought to be even more polluting than coal.

According to the EIA, this export boom will have adverse consequences next year, with the wholesale price of gas climbing by 16% compared to 2025 “mainly due to increased exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) amid stagnant production.”

Williams-Derry said the fossil fuel industry has a “stated goal” to increase the price of gas in the United States through LNG exports. “So you’re going to see an increase in prices in the long term,” he said. “But we’re also going to see injections of volatility, price increases, like we’re seeing now, in the U.S. gas system. We’re now exporting LNG and therefore we’re importing volatility and higher prices.”

Rising gas and electricity prices add to a series of other worsening costs Americans face due to the climate crisis. Homeowners insurance rates are skyrocketing in many parts of the country amid severe weather, with Realtor.com recently finding that premiums could rise another 16%, on average, by 2027.

At the same time, flooding is also expected to become a greater financial burden for households. Over the past decade, an average of more than $45 billion in damage per year has been inflicted on American communities by flooding, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that this cost could increase by as much as a third over the next 30 years.

The Ministry of Energy was contacted about the gas price increase, but did not respond.