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USinflation metrics are still at an elevated level, and there’s a lot of focus on when consumer prices will finally reflect the full impact of President Donald Trump’s volatile tariffs. That said, people are also noticing the rising cost of electricity, especially in the wake of Trump’s budget law which slashes federal support for clean power generation in favor of increased oil and gas production.

The full impact of that shift won’t be felt immediately as federal credits for big solar and wind projects are being phased out, but it could be considerable over the next few years. Residential electricity costs have surged well ahead of overall inflation this year, up about 10%, while overall electricity prices have risen 5.5% from a year ago as of the end of July. The reason is simple: demand is growing faster than utilities can add power-generation capacity. And data centers for artificial intelligence are a big piece of that new demand.

During his campaign, Trump claimed he’d cut electricity prices in half by dramatically boosting coal mining as well as oil and gas drilling. Since returning to office, his Cabinet secretaries for the Energy, Interior and Transportation Departments, as well as EPA, have gone out of their way to help do that. But it doesn’t easily equate to higher power output and lower costs, at least in the foreseeable future.

That’s because while natural gas is highly abundant, there’s a backlog of orders for new gas turbines, meaning it takes years to add new generating capacity. Coal is plentiful, but has long since lost popularity as an energy source, not only because of its climate-cooking carbon emissions, but also because coal-fired plants are just more expensive to operate than those using natural gas or renewables.

Wind and solar plants, combined with large-scale battery storage, can be added more quickly, but Trump’s steep tariffs on wind turbines, solar panels and battery cells, particularly those imported from China, make them pricier. Another speedbump was created when Interior Secretary Doug Bergum recently changed permitting policies to eliminate “preferential” treatment for new wind farms on federal land, meaning such projects will cost more and take longer to build. The U.S. also just launched an investigation into imported wind turbines as a potential national security risk, suggesting tariffs on them could go........

© Forbes