WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Supporters of former President Donald Trump went after President Joe Biden's green energy policies in a recent campaign ad, making a claim about shocking electricity bills.
Utility bills are going up," the ad said, "Electricity costs have risen 25% under Biden."
So, let's Verify.
Our sources are electricity cost data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The campaign ad references a Roll Call opinion column from January that states "electricity costs have also risen significantly, increasing cumulatively by 25.1%."
The piece does not provide a source to back up that statistic.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the average cost of electricity across U.S. cities every month.
Bureau data shows when President Biden took office in January 2021, electricity cost Americans about $0.14 per kilowatt-hour.
Fast forward to this year and the average price has hovered at $0.17 per kilowatt-hour.
It represents a 27.2% increase over that time frame.
To put that in context, a family using 900 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month, which is about the national average, has seen their electricity bill increase from $122.40 in January 2021 to about $155.70 today.
So, we can Verify the ad's claim is true.
The national average does not fully reflect the pricing picture in Pennsylvania.
While prices have increased since Biden took office, the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows the price of electricity dropped about 3% from March 2023 to March of this year.