Con Ed and National Grid Warn of Steep Winter Bills as January Sets Gas Use Records

As New York City weathers its harshest winter in over a decade, the city braces not only for frostbitten commutes but for a punishing spike in utility bills—a predicament with sobering implications for urban energy policy and affordability.

At 7am on a recent January morning, the mercury in Central Park dipped to a bone-chilling 11°F, the lowest mark seen in years. Yet even as New Yorkers layered up for the longest indoor spell since the pandemic, another unwelcome cold front was coming—this time in the mail. In recent days, both Con Edison and National Grid have issued polite but steely warnings to millions of customers: prepare for significant sticker shock on your next energy bill.

January 2026 saw record-breaking cold, making it, according to Con Edison, the fourth-highest month ever recorded for natural-gas distribution. National Grid chimed in, reporting near-record highs in gas demand and designating January 20th as its eighth-busiest day for gas delivery in New York City’s history. Notably, these numbers have translated not just into shivering apartments but looming bill increases—National Grid forecasts a hike nearing 10% for many households.

Behind the rise is the city’s relentless, if predictable, need for heat. In New York, heating relies heavily on fossil fuels, with natural gas supplying not only most residential furnaces but the majority of electricity generated. The repercussions are straightforward: as temperatures plummet, furnaces and boilers strain to keep up, pushing demand—and wholesale energy prices—skyward.

The utility bills confronting New Yorkers consist of two parts: regulated “delivery” fees and the volatile “supply” side, governed by the market price for fuel. The latter fluctuates wildly, especially during unexpected cold snaps, exacerbated this winter by a diminished fleet of power plants. Well-intended policies to shutter the city’s dirtiest legacy generators, notably the 2021 closure of the Indian Point nuclear station, have unintentionally constrained supply. As utilities scramble to buy electricity at premium rates to avoid blackouts, the costs inevitably trickle down.

For the average Manhattanite, that will mean more than a pinched wallet. Roughly one in three city households already spend more than 6% of income on utilities, and the coming bills will squeeze those numbers further. According to the New York Independent System Operator, the body overseeing the state’s grid, purchasing additional electricity at real-time market rates is no small expense. Utilities’ supply charges, unshielded by regulation, will bear the brunt—passed, inexorably, to the consumer.

The secondary effects may ripple across the city’s economy and society. For many, the prospect of a $200–$300 monthly heating bill will mean choices between groceries, medicine, and warmth. Charities and housing advocates are girding for a spate of utility shutoffs or mounting arrears, especially among the city’s elderly and low-income renters. Meanwhile, small businesses, still rattled by pandemic aftershocks, will face a similarly noxious calculus: higher overhead or chillier customers.

There are, predictably, political aftershocks too. State and city officials have spent years trumpeting their climate ambitions: the phase-out of fossil-fuel infrastructure, the legislative drive for building electrification, the pivot toward wind and solar. Yet the present crisis exposes the chasm between aspiration and infrastructure. Without substantive new supply—delayed offshore wind projects, lagging grid upgrades—the transition has left the city’s energy system vulnerable to both cold snaps and sudden price surges.

A tale of two transitions: climate policy collides with reliability

Such woes are hardly unique to New York. From London to Berlin, aging grids and a patchwork transition from coal and nuclear have left big cities wrestling with the delicate balance of decarbonisation and reliability. The closure of Indian Point mirrors decisions in Germany to wind down its own nuclear capacity, with similarly discordant results: higher energy costs and stubborn fossil-fuel dependency. Against this backdrop, New York’s experience is less an outlier than a bellwether of energy transition growing pains in dense, wealthy conurbations.

Economic theory suggests these pinch-points are, to some extent, the cost of cleaning up an old, dirty system. Yet that is cold comfort (no pun intended) for tenants receiving notices of impending 10% spikes with little say in their own heating technology or efficiency. The city’s aging building stock, a jungle of pre-war walk-ups and battered central heating units, means efficiency gains accrue slowly and unevenly. Until investment in new, cleaner generation materialises at scale, residents are left at the mercy of both the weather and global commodity markets.

We reckon New York’s policymakers face an unenviable triage. Freeze further fossil-plant retirements and risk slowing climate goals—or push ahead, accepting that the near-term cost of “greening” the grid is passed directly to tenants and shopkeepers. Social safety nets, like the state’s Home Energy Assistance Program, already find themselves oversubscribed; structural relief is unlikely before next winter.

None of this bodes well for public faith in long-range climate policy. Sudden, sharp energy bill hikes erode support for decarbonisation and lend ammunition to critics more interested in scoring political points than solving the city’s energy challenges. The lesson, as ever, is that leaping ahead of infrastructure risks a backlash that could slow progress for years to come.

Prudent cities—Amsterdam, perhaps, or Seoul—have shown that holistic, phased grid reforms, buttressed by robust supply additions and aggressive demand-side management, can smooth the bumps. In New York, the moment for similar strategic patience (and greater federal and state coordination) appears overdue. For now, though, city-dwellers can take small comfort from a forecasted February thaw—even if the relief is certain to be outpaced by the arrival of their utility bills, and a chillier political season ahead. ■