Business
‘I had no electricity for six months’: American families struggle with soaring energy prices
Danielle KayeBusiness reporter
Kristy HallowellKristy Hallowell had just lost her job when her energy bill unexpectedly tripled to $1,800 a month.
Unable to pay, her gas and electricity were cut off and she, her two children and her mother spent six months of last year relying on a generator to light and heat their house.
The 44-year-old is one of millions of Americans who have fallen behind on their energy bills as prices have soared over the past year.
The electricity is now back on at her home in Greenwood Lake, New York, after a local non-profit helped reach an agreement with the utility to accept a partial payment.
But the gas is still off and electricity bills keep mounting this winter, leaving her in fear of another shut-off. She said she now had about $3,000 in utility debt.
“This has been traumatic, to say the least,” she said.
Nearly one in 20 households are at risk of having their utility debt sent to collections heading into the winter months, according to a recent report.
The number of households with severely overdue utility debt rose by 3.8% in the first six months of Trump’s second term, the analysis of consumer credit data, compiled by the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, found.
Residential energy bills have emerged as a key cost-of-living concern among American consumers, as many buckle under the weight of rising prices and sour on US President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy.
Official economic data from November shows electricity prices rose 6.9% from the year before – much faster than overall inflation.
Trump, who during his campaign said he would cut energy bills in half, has claimed that costs are falling. “Costs under the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION are tumbling down, helped greatly by gasoline and ENERGY,” he posted on social media in November.
The White House blames former President Joe Biden and US central bank interest rates for the lingering economic pain.
But in the wake of Democratic wins in recent state and city elections and polls showing waning consumer confidence, the Trump administration has shifted its messaging to focus on affordability, in a bid to allay voter anxiety about the cost of living in the US.
At the same time, the federal government has proposed slashing the funds it gives to states to help low-income residents pay their utility bills.
Experts also warn that the Trump administration’s rollback of clean energy projects – including its recent decision to pause leases for offshore wind energy projects being built near the Atlantic coastline – could drive electric bills even higher.
“This is going to be a huge deal, both as a policy matter and a political matter,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank.
Laurie Wheelock, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project of New York, said many of her clients – low-income utility customers in New York state seeking help with their bills – have let utilities fall to the side as rent, health insurance and other costs keep getting more expensive.
In 2025, the non-profit saw an increase in utility account terminations for unpaid bills, Ms Wheelock said.
Before the pandemic, clients who approached the organisation typically owed $400 to $900 in utility debt. Now, people often owe upwards of $6,000, she said.
“There’s been this difficult mix of increased costs and financial instability,” she added.
Winter heating costs are expected to jump 9.2% this season, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, driven by rising electricity and natural gas prices and unusually cold weather.
Energy bills tend to be among the highest in the northeast US, the report shows. But households from California to Georgia to South Dakota are also feeling the strain of rising costs over the past year.
Power-hungry tech companies
There are several reasons for rising residential energy costs, analysts say.
For one, the price of natural gas, which is a crucial component of nearly half of electricity generation in the US, has jumped over the past year. The natural gas industry is pushing more and more production overseas, contributing to higher domestic prices.
Electricity generation is “being saddled with ever-increasing costs of fuel”, said John Quigley, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Recent shifts away from clean energy investments could also be at play. A report from the climate advocacy group Climate Power cites the Trump administration’s cancellation of projects that would have produced enough electricity to power the equivalent of 13 million homes.
The gutting of clean energy projects has contributed to a 13% jump in electricity bills since Trump returned to the White House, the report found, as the US increases its dependence on foreign oil.
AFP via Getty ImagesAnother key factor: energy demand from the artificial intelligence boom is straining the power grid.
Technology companies from Alphabet to Amazon are ramping up their investments in AI infrastructure, and data centres require massive amounts of electricity.
Continued and increasing electricity demand for data centres is pushing up prices for everyone, Quigley said.
‘You can deal with people’s frustrations’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told ABC News in November that electricity prices were a “state problem”.
“There are things that the federal government can control. Local electricity prices are not one of them,” he said.
But some analysts argue that if the federal government were to embrace clean energy, it would help lower prices.
On the state level, some lawmakers have proposed requiring large data centres to supply their own power, so families don’t shoulder the costs.
In Virginia, where data centres have proliferated, governor-elect Abigail Spanberger has announced plans to ensure tech companies are “paying their fair share”, encouraging clean on-site and off-site generation and storage at data centres.
Virginia utility regulators recently authorised a separate rate category for the biggest electricity customers, like data centres, requiring them to pay a larger share to shield other ratepayers.
“You can deal in the near term with people’s frustrations around prices while dealing with these long-term structural fixes,” said Groundwork Collaborative’s Alex Jacquez.
But any relief for consumers will take time. Residential energy prices are likely to stay elevated in the coming months.
Ibrahim AwadallahLast year, Ibrahim Awadallah, 30, installed solar panels on his home in Charlotte, North Carolina in the hopes of reducing his energy costs.
His plan largely worked. His electricity bills tend to be lower than his neighbours’, even taking into account the $180 he pays per month on his solar panel loan.
Still, in October, Awadallah noticed his bill from his utility company getting more expensive – a roughly 10% increase – even though he was out of town much of the month.
A telecommunications developer has proposed building a data centre nearby in east Charlotte. Awadallah is concerned that the project, if approved, will drive up electric costs even more.
“I don’t think things are getting better anytime soon,” he said.
Ridvan_celik | Istock | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
With donor-advised funds gaining popularity as a vehicle for the wealthy to give back, risks and potential conflicts of interests are emerging — and being put on display in a lawsuit over a family’s $21 million charitable fund.
Philip Peterson, a 63-year-old Kansas resident, filed suit in January alleging that the nonprofit that administers his family’s donor-advised fund has refused to communicate with him and has failed to make charitable grants that he has recommended since early 2024. The suit, filed in Colorado federal court, alleges the Christian nonprofit, called WaterStone, cut off his access to information about the account and that he doesn’t know how the fund has fared since the end of 2023, when it had $21 million in assets.
Counsel for WaterStone, founded as the Christian Community Foundation, said in a statement that the Colorado Springs nonprofit has respected the wishes of Peterson’s late father, who originally created the fund in 2005 and died in 2019.
The case sheds light on the growing uptake, and dangers, of donor-advised funds, or DAFs, which have quickly become one of the most dominant forces in philanthropy. Americans donated nearly $90 billion to DAFs in 2024, per the most recent annual report from the DAF Research Collaborative. According to the most recent data available, DAFs held $326 billion combined in assets in 2024.
For Americans looking to give back and save on taxes, DAFs are marketed as a flexible and simple way to do so, often described as charitable saving accounts or credit cards. Instead of writing a check to a nonprofit, donors contribute cash and other assets to a DAF. While the tax deduction is immediate, the funds can be allocated to charities later.
DAFs, unlike private foundations, are not required to distribute assets within a given timeframe, a common criticism among opponents who say DAFs are wealth hoarding vehicles.
The Peterson case offers a cautionary tale on the tradeoffs – especially when it comes to control. While donors are able to recommend how the funds are distributed to charity, the assets are legally controlled by the organizations that administer the DAF on their behalf. Though these organizations, also known as sponsors, typically respect their donors’ wishes, donors have little recourse if they do not.
“It’s sold to the public as, ‘This is your account, and you can decide where it goes, and you can move it, and you maintain full control.’ But if you don’t give up dominion and control, you don’t get the tax benefits,” said Ray Madoff, tax scholar and professor at Boston College Law School. “There’s a disconnect between the legal rules that govern it and the understanding of the parties. And this case is a perfect example of it.”
How much to give
Peterson told Inside Wealth that the rift with WaterStone started with a disagreement over how much to distribute.
In early 2024, Peterson alleges, WaterStone CEO Ken Harrison told him that the organization was going to keep the fund’s principal in perpetuity and only make grants from investment income. Peterson said he did not agree to the proposal as this would not allow the fund to make its customary annual grants of between $2.3 million and $2.5 million.
He further alleges that in March 2024, after he told Harrison over Zoom that he wanted to move the DAF to another sponsor, Harrison told him never to contact WaterStone again and abruptly ended the call.
Now Peterson is suing to assert his advisory privileges and regain access to the DAF, which was started by his late father, Gordon Peterson, a real estate investor and devout Christian, to support evangelical Christian causes. Peterson ultimately seeks the court to compel WaterStone to transfer the DAF to another organization so he can bring the fund’s giving back up to speed.
He said he requested WaterStone make a $1 million grant in 2024 but does not know if that grant – or if any grants – were issued that year. In 2025, WaterStone notified Peterson it would permit a $400,000 distribution from the fund, he said.
“I made a promise to my father. I promised him that if I was the remaining person on the account that I would direct the funds as I knew that he would 100% approve,” he said. “I want to be a man of my word.”
Philip Peterson, left, pictured with his father Gordon in 2015. Gordon Peterson passed away in 2019.
Courtesy of Philip Peterson
WaterStone declined to comment on specifics of Peterson’s allegations. The deadline for WaterStone to answer the complaint in court or move to dismiss it is mid-March.
“WaterStone has consistently carried out the articulated wishes of the donor since the donor advised fund in question was established,” WaterStone’s legal counsel said in a written statement, referring to Peterson’s father. “The plaintiff in this case is not the donor.”
Andrew Nussbaum, Peterson’s lawyer, said that WaterStone helped Gordon Peterson appoint his wife, Ruth, and son Philip as co-advisors to the DAF before he died. Ruth Peterson died in 2021, leaving Philip Peterson as the sole successor-advisor. Prior to 2024, WaterStone granted Philip Peterson’s grant requests, Nussbaum said.
Nussbaum said the lawsuit could set a chilling precedent if the court upholds WaterStone’s argument that designated successors do not have advisory privileges.
“If WaterStone is right, you’re talking about billions of dollars being beyond any kind of legal reach of the original donor-advisors or their successors to have any oversight related to the funds,” Nussbaum said.
Moreover, Peterson said he believes WaterStone has not honored his father’s wishes. He alleges that WaterStone has delayed or denied his grant recommendations even though they met the mission statement written by his father, which included a list of approved charities.
“I can tell you this: My dad would never have created a donor-advised fund if he knew that this was going to be the outcome. He felt very passionately about this,” he said.
DAF trade-offs
Law professor and DAF critic Roger Colinvaux said in his view, donors who want control of DAF assets are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
“Whether you like DAFs or not, the DAF sponsor is an independent charity. It’s an independent entity, and its duties are not to the donor,” said Colinvaux, professor at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. “If the plaintiff wanted the sort of control that the plaintiff seems to want, as evidenced in the complaint, there’s a structure for that, and that’s a private foundation.”
Dana Brakman Reiser, professor at Brooklyn Law School, cautioned that Peterson’s story is a rare scenario. She said the biggest DAF sponsors like Fidelity Charitable and Schwab Charitable (now DAFgiving360) are affiliated with financial institutions and generally inclined to keep donors happy.
“It’s in their interest as long as honoring the donor’s request is not going to get the sponsor in trouble,” she said. Brakman Reiser added that the IRS prohibits using DAF assets to buy gala tickets or pay college tuition.
Still, the interests of sponsors and donor-advisors are rarely perfectly aligned.
Sponsors typically collect fees for managing DAF assets, creating an inherent financial incentive to disburse fewer assets, according to Chuck Collins, the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. While community foundations pioneered the DAF model, they are now competing with larger commercially-affiliated sponsors for donors’ dollars, he added.
“More and more, they are having to compete with the commercial DAFs like Fidelity that have very low overhead and don’t take much in the way of fees. And so what’s the business model for a community foundation where, you know, 80% of the donations coming in are from people wanting to create DAFs?” he said. “In reality, their business model now depends on people parking their assets for longer periods of time.”
While Peterson’s case is unusual, it’s not the first legal challenge surrounding DAFs.
In 2018, a hedge fund couple sued Fidelity Charitable, contending the sponsor broke an agreement to liquidate their donated shares gradually and instead sold off 1.93 million shares, a position originally worth $100 million, in a matter of hours. Fidelity Charitable argued that it had followed the law and the case was ruled in their favor.
In another noteworthy debacle, in 2009, a Virginia-based charity called the National Heritage Foundation wiped out 9,000 DAFs worth $25 million combined to pay out creditors after it filed for bankruptcy.
Giving directly to charity doesn’t necessarily guarantee the assets will be used to the donor’s intent. But adding an intermediary into the equation adds another layer of complexity.
The handful of lawsuits filed by donor-advisors over how DAF assets are spent or invested have thus far been largely unsuccessful in court.
In short, according to Colinvaux, courts have upheld that donors have ceded any control in order to qualify for the tax break. If donors had the right to control assets — as opposed to the privilege to advise — they would not be able to claim a deduction, he said.
Nussbaum said Peterson’s case is different as it focuses on his rights to advise grants rather than control over how the assets are investments.
Peterson said he tried to resolve the dispute with Waterstone for about two years before going to court. While he knows his suit faces considerable odds, he said he felt he had no choice.
“People put an enormous amount of trust in these companies, and we’re hopefully going to find out what these companies can and can’t do,” he said. “It may have a big effect on the industry, and I don’t want to be that guy. All I want to do is to be able to continue my father’s legacy.”
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the IRS limitations on use of DAF assets.
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Waitrose is set to remove mackerel from its shelves amid escalating concerns over unsustainable fishing practices.
The retailer said that it is the first major UK supermarket to suspend sourcing of the popular fish.
It said that fresh, chilled, and frozen mackerel, primarily sourced from Scottish waters, will be unavailable to shoppers by 29 April. Tinned varieties will follow once the current stock is depleted.
Conservationists are welcoming the move and urging other supermarkets to follow suit.
The measure comes as governments have repeatedly failed to implement catch limits recommended by scientists, jeopardising the long-term viability of mackerel stocks.
The International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has issued stark warnings, advising a 70 per cent reduction in catches for 2026 across all regional mackerel stocks compared to 2025’s recommended levels.
With the stock consistently fished above sustainable thresholds, this translates to a 77 per cent cut on the 755,143 tonnes scientists estimated would be caught in 2025.
Overfishing has resulted in depleting mackerel stocks in the north-east Atlantic, with Ices saying the species, and the wider fishing industry, could face long-term risks unless countries stick to recommended catch limits.
Waitrose said the decision in December by four of the coastal states which fish mackerel to cut catches by 48 per cent was a step forward, but did not meet Ices advice.
North-east Atlantic mackerel will no longer meet the supermarket’s responsible sourcing requirements in line with the Sustainable Seafood Coalition codes of conduct, the retailer said.
Jake Pickering, head of agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries at Waitrose, said: “By suspending sourcing of mackerel at Waitrose we are reinforcing our ethical and sustainable business commitments, acting to tackle overfishing and protect the long-term health of our oceans and this crucial fish.
“Our customers trust us to source responsibly, and we are closely monitoring the fishery.
“We look forward to bringing mackerel back to our shelves once it meets our high sourcing standards.”
As alternatives, Waitrose is launching a new range of fish products including hot smoked herring, hot smoked peppered herring and hot smoked sweetcure seabass, all of which are Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified.
The retailer said it would also introduce MSC-certified frozen sardines from May as a sustainable replacement for frozen mackerel, and plans to become the first retailer to sell 100 per cent MSC tinned sardines.
Waitrose said it would maintain its relationship with its mackerel suppliers and its new supply of herring, seabass, sardines and trout will be sourced through current supplier partnerships.
But there is currently no predetermined time-frame as to when Waitrose will start sourcing mackerel again.
Marija Rompani, director of ethics and sustainability at the John Lewis Partnership, said: “We believe sustainable food production must balance climate action, nature protection and responsible fish sourcing is fundamental to protecting our oceans.
“We will continue to work closely with suppliers and industry partners to support the recovery and responsible management of fish stocks.”
Charles Clover, co-founder of conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation, said mackerel – one of the largest remaining commercial fish stocks in the north-east Atlantic – had declined 75 per cent in the last 10 years because fishing nations, including the UK, had overfished it.
“They have put too little effort into the task of reaching agreement on a sharing arrangement – and some countries have been awarding themselves more quota than is justified by science,” he said.
“This crisis has been ignored for too long.
“We hope that this action by Waitrose sends it to the top of the political agenda. We call on other retailers to follow Waitrose’s example.”
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