New York energy company ramps up disconnections as it seeks 11% price hike

The Guardian

2 days ago

An energy company seeking to hike utility bills in New York City by 11% disconnected more than 88,000 households during the first six months of 2025, signaling a crackdown on families struggling to cover rising energy costs even as the climate crisis drives extreme temperatures.
Con Edison, the monopoly utility that provides electricity to 3.6m homes across the country's largest city and neighboring Westchester county, disconnected almost 2.5% of all its customers between January and June this year – triple the total number of families left without power in 2024. One in five disconnected homes remain without power for at least a week.
The utility shut off 16,327 households in the month leading up to 25 June. New York was hit by its first heatwave between 23 and 25 June, breaking daytime and night-time records in Central Park and driving a surge in emergency room visits.
New York is among the most expensive places for electricity, with families shouldering above-inflation price hikes in recent years on top of unaffordable housing and the broader cost of living crisis stemming from the Covid pandemic.
Heat-related deaths account for about 3% of all fatalities from May through September, making New York the second deadliest city for heat after Phoenix, Arizona.
In the past five years, more than 40% of New Yorkers have fallen into arrears, and 23% of households were disconnected at least once – leaving families without access to a fridge, internet, cooking facilities and heat or cooling until they can find the money to pay for reconnection.
Black and Latino New Yorkers are more than twice as likely as white residents to fall behind, and almost eight times more likely to have a utility shutoff, according to the 2024 Poverty Tracker/Robin Hood report on energy insecurity.
'Disconnection is an effective cost recovery strategy for Con Edison but it's also completely inhumane. It's traumatizing for families and costs some people their lives,' said Diana Hernandez, co-author of the report and associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University.
'People want to pay their bills but they are unaffordable for too many families.'
Almost 16% of New York homes – one in six Con Edison residential customers – were behind on their energy bills at the end of 2024, with debts totaling $948m, according to data submitted by the utility to the state regulator.
But as Con Edison ramped up disconnections over the past six months, the debt fell to $840m by the end of June with 12.5% of New Yorkers now behind on their bills.
At the current rate, Con Edison could disconnect 150,000 households by the end of the year, the highest number by any utility in the country, according to Mark Wolfe, an energy economist.
'Energy is unaffordable so people fall behind. The disconnection numbers show that Con Edison is aggressively cracking down, and life is going to become harder for poor people in New York,' said Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada).
Researchers at Neada, the organization for state directors of the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap), collated the debt and disconnection figures submitted to the New York Public Services Commission, the regulator.
There is no demographic breakdown but people of color, households with children, renters in small buildings, and people with pre-existing medical conditions who rely on electronic devices such as oxygen dispensers, as well as Bronx residents are all more likely to experience energy poverty and therefore a disconnection, the 2024 Robin Hood report found.
A Con Edison spokesperson said: 'Termination of service is a last resort, and we do so only after extensive outreach and exhausting all other options … nearly two-thirds of residential customers in arrears are on payment plans. It is essential that our customers pay their bills to maintain safe service and the most reliable system in the nation.'
Most customers were reconnected within 24 hours and 80% within a week, the spokesperson added.
Nationwide, an estimated one in three households experience energy poverty – the inability to access sufficient amounts of electricity and other energy sources due to financial hardship. Low-income households, people of color and states with the fewest social safety nets are disproportionately affected, and millions of families are regularly forced to ration food, medicines, energy and other essentials
Across New York state – and the country – a patchwork of regulations prevent some households from being shut off on very hot or cold days, but millions are not protected at all.
New York, like much of the US, is susceptible to extreme highs and low temperatures, and the climate crisis is driving more frequent and more intense heatwaves.
The number of heat deaths has been rising over the past decade, and on average 525 people in New York City die prematurely each year for heat-related reasons – the vast majority due to the impact high temperatures and humidity have on existing medical conditions, according to the latest figures from the city's department of public health.
Heat kills twice Black New Yorkers at twice the rate of white residents due to past and current structural racism that creates economic, healthcare, housing, energy and other systems that benefit white people and disadvantage people of color, the report found.
Most deaths occur in homes without access to a functioning air conditioning. Citywide, 11% of New Yorkers do not have air conditioners at home but the rate is much higher in low-income communities of color. One study found that a fifth of renters do not use their air conditioner due to cost.
And while protections have improved in recent years, it has not been enough to shield families hit hardest by rising energy prices, rents and inflation – or the increasingly brutal heat and humidity.
According to its website, Con Edison currently suspends disconnections on the hottest and coldest days based on forecasts from the National Weather Service. In the summer, the utility will not disconnect a family the day of or day before the heat index – what the temperature feels like when humidity is taken into account – is forecast to hit 90F (32.2C) at Central Park – one of the shadiest parts of the city. It also suspends disconnections for two days after a 90F heat index day.
Yet temperatures in some neighborhoods in the Bronx and upper Manhattan, where there are fewer trees, less access to air conditioning, more Black and Latino residents, and most heat deaths, exceed Central Park by 6 to 8 degrees due to the heat island effect, according to one study from 2022.
Energy poverty is a chronic problem for many New Yorkers.
New York state is the largest recipient of Liheap, the chronically underfunded bipartisan federal program that helped about 6m households keep on top of energy bills last year – and which narrowly survived being cut completely from Trump's 2026 budget.
In fiscal year 2024-25, New York received $379m (almost 10%) of the total Liheap fund, and Governor Kathy Hochul invested an additional $35m to supplement support for heating bills in January after Liheap money ran out with months of winter still to go.
In the summer, the Liheap program only covers the cost of an air conditioning unit and installation for qualifying low-income households in New York – not energy bills. A city program can provide a means-tested loan for working families in arrears.
Disconnections declined during the pandemic thanks to a statewide moratorium and debt forgiveness schemes, as well as child tax credits and a boost to food stamps among other federal programs that helped lift millions of Americans out of poverty. But the Covid-era social safety programs have now all been terminated, and recent focus groups conducted by Hernandez and her colleagues found people still struggling to recover and rationing energy use because they were so concerned about rising bills.
'The city has got better at advocating for households disproportionately impacted by disconnections but it's a drop in the bucket of where it should be,' said Hernandez, the energy justice expert. 'The 88,000 households disconnected are people who have done everything to get the money and still couldn't get caught up. It illustrates families have been left completely exposed.'
Yet energy costs are about to get even higher in New York.
Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make electricity production more expensive, leading to residents paying $140 a year on average more by 2030, according to analysis by Energy Innovation. The bill also slashes benefits such as Snap (food stamps) and Medicaid, which will put further pressure on millions of families.
Meanwhile, Con Edison is under fire from city and state politicians including Hochul and the city comptroller (chief finance officer) and former mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, for requesting a rate hike of 11% for electricity and 13% for gas, which the regulator is currently considering. Con Ed's proposed electricity rate hike could raise the average household bill by $372 next year. (The utility provides gas to 1.1m homes.)
'The combination of rising temperatures, rising electricity rates, the possible termination of the federal Liheap program, and this increase in shutoffs by Con Ed risks dramatically increasing heat-related illness and deaths for New Yorkers,' Lander told the Guardian.
'There needs to be strategies in place so that people will pay their bills – but to punish people who are poor by cutting off their electricity ever, but especially in extreme heat or wintertime, is inhumane. It is a form of debtors' prison.'
Con Edison did not respond to criticisms over its proposed rate hike but said it provided $311m in bill discounts to income-eligible customers last year, and the regulator (PSC) recently expanded the Energy Affordability Program to help more vulnerable residents.