“Even if you don’t live in tornado alley, you might be seeing your insurance rates go up to cover the cost for people who are in the more danger-prone areas,” says Catherine Wolfram, professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the study’s authors.
Utility rates are also going up. Residential electricity costs have risen by almost 40% since 2021 and residential gas costs have increased by 40% since 2019— outpacing inflation.
That’s in part due to the cost of responding to natural disasters. “There are these more and more frequent storms that go through and wipe out the utility poles, and the utility rates eventually have to go up to pay for that,” says Wolfram.
Not to mention that warmer weather also means more A.C. and higher electricity bills. “People are just paying more for air conditioning,” says Wolfram.
A rapid rollout of clean energy technologies—like solar panels and wind— is one way governments can both make energy costs more affordable and bring down the cost of living, according to the International Energy Agency. The Trump Administration, however, is moving in the opposite direction—investing millions in keeping struggling coal plants alive despite little economic benefit.