Con Ed Wins Smaller Rate Hikes for 2026 as Trump and Mamdani Unite in Dismay

Even New York’s most unlikely political bedfellows can agree on one thing: energy bills are burning a hole in city dwellers’ wallets.

That sound New Yorkers heard last week was not the comforting hum of a subway train or the trill of a yellow cab’s horn, but rather a rare duet from Washington and City Hall. President Donald Trump and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — known for agreeing on little else — both trained their ire on Con Edison, the city’s gas and electric behemoth, over routine rate hikes that have kept many customers in a perennial state of sticker shock.

For all their bluster, though, events had already outpaced the city’s most prominent politicians. On November 27th, the New York Public Service Commission quietly greenlit Con Edison’s plan for a three-year round of electricity and gas bill increases. While more modest than the utility’s original ask, the increments are real: starting in 2026, city households should brace for a $4 bump in their monthly electric bills and an eye-watering $10.67 monthly jolt in gas costs — with two more bumps to follow in 2027 and 2028.

In the city that never sleeps, few stay awake by choice just to pore over utility bills. But the approval’s first implication lands squarely on those least able to calibrate their spending. New York’s working- and middle-class residents, already fighting uphill against rent and grocery inflation, now face another incremental but inescapable cost of urban life. As many as 20,000 residents — a record — submitted comments on the rate hike, largely venting their exasperation. “Burn up during the summer; freeze in the winter and work by candlelight,” fumed one.

Even so, the outcome could have been less palatable. In January, Con Edison sought a one-time jolt: a near-13% surge for gas (about $46 a month) and a hefty 19% for electric (an additional $26). Under pressure, the Public Service Commission trimmed these ambitions by roughly half. Some advocacy groups, including the progressive Alliance for a Green Economy and stalwarts like the New York Power Authority, ultimately acquiesced — reckoning that confrontations over reliability and green upgrades would prove costlier in the long run.

Yet for the city’s businesses and low-income tenants, costs remain cumulative. Housing remains stubbornly out of reach, and utilities account for a rising share of household expenses—especially when wages stagnate. Restaurants and bodegas, already squeezed by minimum wage hikes and supply chain ructions, now eye their Con Ed bills with dread. The social safety net, likewise, may feel the strain as fixed-income recipients seek relief or, in a small but worrying number of cases, fall into arrears.

The new rate schedule, by official rationale, funds upgrades for grid reliability and climate resilience. Con Edison must comply with stricter mandates on fossil-fuel phase-outs and grid decarbonisation, and it claims that every dollar extracted now wards against sooty blackouts or Superstorm Sandy-style calamities later. These investments are part and parcel of New York’s ambitions to be a global leader in urban climate adaptation, yet their financial toll falls, with characteristic unevenness, on millions with little say in the state’s climate calculus.

A tale of two cities—and two Americas

Zooming out, New York’s energy squeeze mirrors a national conundrum: how to modernise ageing urban infrastructure without pricing out the metropolis’s lifeblood — its residents. Across America, utilities have sought double-digit hikes as they confront the costs of renewables, extreme weather, and deferred maintenance, from California’s PG&E to Chicago’s ComEd. Invariably, supposedly “paltry” increments compound yearly, eroding disposable incomes and stirring political unrest.

Meanwhile, New York’s state oversight has proved relatively muscular compared with laissez-faire regimes elsewhere. Whereas the Public Service Commission halved Con Ed’s requested increases, regulators in Texas or Georgia have recently rubber-stamped far steeper surges. Whether this portends a national backlash or a slow march towards uniform green surcharges will depend, in part, on how deftly utilities handle public angst — and how honestly politicians respond.

What is remarkable — or perhaps uniquely New York — is the brief truce struck between such stalwarts of the left and right as Mr Trump and Mr Mamdani. Their mutual outrage reflects a cross-partisan consonance: that no self-respecting city ought to see energy costs outpace wage growth. Yet, despite their rhetorical firepower, neither offered specifics on how to wring costs from a system already beset by regulatory mandates, climate hazards, and, let us admit, a Gordian web of union contracts.

There is a lesson here, writ large. New York’s balancing act — between environmental mandates and affordability, between reliability and inclusivity — will not resolve itself with populist bromides or editorials alone. The Commission’s partial trimming of Con Edison’s ambitions shows what can happen when public scrutiny is sustained and voluminous. Still, the underlying forces — ageing pipes, unglamorous transformers, and the inexorable march of heat waves and hurricanes — will force the city back to the negotiating table repeatedly.

No one expects New York to become Copenhagen overnight, nor its utilities to bankroll the energy transition at their own expense. But neither can the city afford a slow drift towards unaffordability, lest its much-vaunted diversity dissolve into a monoculture of the rich, the leveraged, and the lucky. It is not enough, as we have long argued, to push for clean kilowatts if vast swathes of the metropolis must dim the lights to pay for it.

As winter encroaches and summer’s heat waits in the wings, New Yorkers will watch their meters and — perhaps more eagerly than usual — their leaders. The likelihood that two rivals could agree on a single issue may offer fleeting solace. For now, our city’s energy future remains as uncertain, and as contested, as its politics. ■