Record Gas Use Hits Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island as Cold Snap Lifts Energy Bills

Record-shattering winter gas consumption in New York signals daunting choices for the city’s present and future energy mix.

This winter’s brute chill has not just turned New York’s streets into frost-bitten corridors; it has also sent demand for natural gas to historic heights. On February 7th, National Grid delivered more gas to Long Island and the far-flung Rockaways than at any other time in its history—breaking a record set only a week earlier. In the brisk wake of that deep freeze, New Yorkers in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and parts of Queens came close behind, with National Grid reporting eight of its ten highest-ever demand days between January 23rd and February 7th. The statistics are as bracing as the weather: three of New York City’s ten greatest gas hungry days occurred in this fortnight alone.

The figures from Con Edison—the city’s other major purveyor of winter warmth—were nearly as frosty. On the very same February 7th, Con Edison notched its third-highest gas distribution in history. January 2026 also became one of its four busiest months ever for gas delivery, as customers throughout the five boroughs and neighboring Westchester endlessly cranked their thermostats upward. The numbers are not merely the stuff of accounting ledgers: every uptick in fuel delivered is mirrored by increased costs for end users, many of whom are already winter-worn.

A chill in the air is always a boon for utility companies, but this time, the ledger’s other side reveals surging costs for consumers. The Public Service Commission, a state oversight body, green-lit a fresh rate hike for both gas and electricity customers of Con Edison as of January. National Grid warns its customers in the city that they could see bills climb by 9.2% month over month—no paltry jump for families eking out a living on stagnant wages. Con Edison, delicately phrasing the impact, admitted only that increases “could be steep,” invoking nationwide supply dynamics and a dose of regulatory understatement in equal measure.

If the cost of staying warm climbs inevitably skyward, the explanations are familiar. It is not only New York’s apartments that guzzle natural gas: upwards of 60% of city households heat with the stuff, and nearly 70% use it to cook. The city’s electricity is similarly wedded to gas, with most power plants fired by the blue flame. In a winter like this, demand for both heat and light surges in tandem, compounding the appetite for fuel. In short: when the mercury dips, the city’s complex energy edifice tilts toward the fossil-fuelled status quo.

Energy providers, hardly known for poetry, now sound almost plaintive in urging thrift. Con Edison’s press office dispenses homespun wisdom: clear radiators, open blinds, mind the thermostat. The city’s most intrepid residents, hoping to shave dollars off their bills, are told by the U.S. Department of Energy to maintain a thermostat of 68°F—lower, if they can bear it. These nudges are designed to tame demand at the margins, but are unlikely to offset the scale of systemic dependency.

The news comes at a critical juncture for New York’s climate ambitions. The state’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, reputed to be one of America’s most robust green-energy laws, once envisioned gas phase-outs commencing this year. Yet, in a bout of regulatory realism, Governor Kathy Hochul recently postponed implementation until 2027, acknowledging the city’s fraught relationship with its own heating infrastructure. The heatwave of gas consumption during this cold snap only underscores why: phase-outs in theory run headlong into the hard limits of current technology and behavior.

As energy costs soar, large swathes of the city are feeling financial frostbite. Higher monthly bills exert pressure on low- and middle-income households, for whom utility costs can already tip budgetary scales. If policy ambitions outstrip the practical means of weaning residents from gas, the risk is a political backlash that chills enthusiasm for climate action. Those who see gas as a bridge fuel—a necessary halfway house between coal and full electrification—now find themselves hemmed in by both volatile markets and ambitious green deadlines.

Frozen in transition: New York’s energy paradox

The city’s predicament is hardly unique. Across the Northeastern United States, a cold January saw utilities scrambling to balance surging demand with supply chain constraints. Boston and Philadelphia reported similar spikes, as the region’s aging buildings, often minimally insulated, guzzled gas to ward off frostbite. In Europe, comparable cold snaps have repeatedly strained electricity and gas grids, catalyzing fresh debate: how to secure energy security, affordability, and carbon reduction—all at once?

New York’s challenge, then, is nothing less than emblematic of the developed world’s move away from fossil fuel dependency. Yet the record-breaking demand for gas during winter reveals how deeply the city’s daily life remains hitched to old infrastructure and habits. Retrofitting buildings for electric heat pumps—darlings of climatologists everywhere—will require not just political will but untold billions in investment, and several years of noisy construction.

Skeptics will argue that the city’s incremental pace of change portends years of fossil fuel lock-in, even as official deadlines draw nearer. Yet the data from National Grid and Con Edison provide a tonic against both utopian fervor and cynical torpor. For now, gas is the lifeline that keeps New York’s 8.5 million residents from literal freezing. It is possible to imagine a city powered by renewable electricity, but brutal winters will punish any transition not managed with care, planning, and financial realism.

What, then, is to be done? Policymakers should resist both the paralyzing comfort of the status quo and the hubristic urge to ban natural gas before credible alternatives are cheap and plentiful. Winter exposes the gaps between aspiration and execution. New Yorkers, ever adaptable, will weigh the merits of regulation, retrofitting, and rationing with characteristic scepticism. But even the city that never sleeps can be slowed by a failure to reconcile the brutish facts of climate, cost, and infrastructure.

If history is any guide, necessity will catalyze investment in resilience and electrification—albeit at a pace more glacial than activists would like. In the meantime, winter will continue to test not just pipes and boilers, but the mettle of the city’s energy ambitions. ■