What is causing US utility bills to rise and will it persist in warmer months?

Jasmine Graham was quoted in The Guardian:

“There are already people who are in massive utility debt from the pandemic,” said Jasmine Graham, an energy justice policy manager at We Act for Environmental Justice non-profit.

Graham gave an example of one of the group’s members who is $5,000 in debt, is supplementing her heating with a gas stove, and is pregnant while raising a child under the age of one. “Tell me how a payment plan is going to be enough for her?” Graham said.

Additionally, undocumented residents don’t have access to most federally funded programs that require citizenship, leaving a significant part of New York City’s population without access for help.

Communities of color and low-income people are more likely to live in older, less efficient buildings that result in a higher energy burden, or the percentage of the income spent on cost of heating, cooling and powering a home. In 2016 the state set a target that low-income New Yorkers should pay no more than 6% of their income toward energy bills.

​In New York City, 32% of Black and 33% of Latino households have an energy burden above 6%, and one in four New Yorkers have an energy burden of over 17%.
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Utility companies have a legal duty to hedge, or essentially protect their customers against rapid price increases, by means of accounting for winter-related spikes and locking in a lower price ahead of time. But both Graham and Berkley expect the investigations into Con Edison to reveal potential negligence in the hedging practice on the utility company’s end.

Meanwhile, Con Edison has asked the state for permission to increase its prices.

If passed, the utility company would raise its electric rate by 11% and gas by 18%. According to the company, the roughly $1.7bn in additional revenue they seek would go to upgrading energy delivery systems. Graham said the recent and proposed hikes make a greater case for the importance of public power, or not-for-profit utilities that are community-owned and locally controlled.
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“We need to move away from a model that’s reliant on corporations,” Graham said. “And move toward a democratic, renewable energy system that prioritizes energy affordability for low-income folks.”