By: Helen Cherlovsky

One of the least jubilant corners of New York City during the surreal scene of President Donald Trump and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani smiling together at the White House last Friday was, by all accounts, the Consolidated Edison Building in Manhattan. There, behind closed doors and far from the cameras documenting the shocking détente between two men otherwise politically allergic to each other, sat the utility executives who suddenly discovered that they had become the great unifier of American politics—reviled by both a conservative president and a self-described socialist mayor-elect. And as Gothamist.com reported on Thursday, the antagonism is neither spontaneous nor unfounded.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a surreal tableau that confounded longtime observers of both men, Trump declared that “fuel prices [have been] way down, but it hasn’t shown up in Con Edison.” The columnist class blinked, wondering whether they had slipped into an alternative universe. Then came Mamdani’s response—swift, clipped, and shockingly aligned with the Republican president. “Absolutely,” he said, punctuating what seemed to be the one point of agreement between two men whose visions for America could not be further apart. And with those two words, the city’s 200-year-old energy supplier suddenly found itself encircled by the most unlikely of political adversaries.

Yet the irony, as Gothamist.com highlighted in a series of meticulous analyses, is that the White House confrontation arrived too late to alter the near-term trajectory of energy rates for New Yorkers. Because just hours before the two men met, Con Edison had already secured state approval to significantly increase rates beginning in 2026—locking in a future of higher bills regardless of presidential theatrics or mayoral pressure.

The newly approved rate agreement, negotiated between Con Ed and the Public Service Commission, ensures that electricity rates will rise by 3.5 percent in 2026, followed by increases of 3.2 percent in 2027 and 3.1 percent in 2028. For the average New York City household, the 2026 increase alone will result in an additional four dollars per month. Gas rates will rise even more sharply: 4.4 percent next year, 5.7 percent in 2027, and 5.6 percent in 2028. As the Gothamist.com report noted, these hikes translate into an average monthly increase of $10.67 for gas beginning next year, then $14.38 the following year, and $15.08 in 2028. For many New Yorkers already struggling under the city’s crushing cost-of-living pressures, these figures read not like regulatory adjustments but like existential threats.

Despite the breathless insistence from Con Ed that this was the best deal possible—far below the colossal hikes the utility originally sought—New Yorkers remain furious. Gothamist.com observed that the Public Service Commission received an astonishing 20,000 comments from the public on the proposed rate increases, most of them steeped in raw outrage. Con Ed’s initial request would have triggered unprecedented hikes: a nearly 13 percent jump in gas bills—a staggering $46.42 more each month—and a 19 percent increase in electric bills. After months of pressure, the utility and state regulators scaled back the numbers, reducing the gas revenue request by almost 60 percent and the electricity request by roughly 34 percent.

Yet this retreat has done little to placate the public. The comments recorded by the PSC read like dispatches from a city on the brink. As Gothamist.com reported, one New Yorker, Lauren Boudreau, captured the mood with unrestrained fury, warning that she would be unable to cool herself in the summer or heat her home in the winter if rates increased again. “I will burn up during the summer; freeze in the winter and work by candlelight, you greedy a— backwards sorry excuse for a company,” she wrote. “Do you want an angry mob on your hands? This is how you get one.”

Con Ed responded to the White House-centered uproar tactfully, at least in tone. “We recognize affordability is a critical issue and work every day to balance the investments needed for resilience and reliability with customer costs,” spokesperson Jamie McShane told reporters. The utility, he added, “welcomes the opportunity to partner with the mayor-elect on solutions that make New York affordable for everyone.” Yet one sensed that McShane himself understood the remark would fall flat. For a city that has watched its utility bills soar while Con Ed profits rose by 66 percent over the past decade, such bromides are as potent as offering chamomile tea at a five-alarm fire.

The structural problem, as the Gothamist.com report explained in stark detail, is that the design of New York’s energy system practically guarantees rising costs. State law promises Con Ed a fixed return on equity, which is baked directly into customers’ bills and incentivizes the company to spend—not to economize. The more capital infrastructure a utility builds, the more profit it is legally entitled to collect. And because gas pipelines, hookups, and distribution systems require extraordinary amounts of capital investment, the state’s regulatory framework has historically rewarded expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure even as legislators insist they are racing toward a carbon-neutral future.

This perverse financial architecture is visible in Con Ed’s own filings, which show that the largest capital expenditure in its gas system relates not to climate-conscious upgrades or modernization but simply to connecting new customers to the grid. For years, the utility relied on the notorious “100-foot rule,” which declared new gas hookups “free” as long as the property in question was located within 100 feet of an existing gas pipeline. The reality, as environmental advocates repeatedly told Gothamist.com, is that nothing was free; the cost simply shifted to every other gas customer in the city. The result was a quiet subsidy of approximately $200 million per year—paid by ratepayers who often had no idea their bills were funding a policy widely considered outdated and environmentally harmful.

The New York Legislature finally voted to repeal the 100-foot rule during the last legislative session, but the bill now sits unsigned on Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk. And Con Ed, which opposed the repeal, continues to operate under the old framework until Hochul either signs or vetoes the measure. The governor’s delay has become a flashpoint for critics who believe she is proving far more deferential to the utility than to the needs of New Yorkers.

Kim Fraczek, director of the Sane Energy Project, articulated this frustration clearly in comments to Gothamist.com, noting that the governor’s hesitancy forces ratepayers to shoulder the cost of infrastructure expansion even as the state’s climate law mandates the retirement of the entire gas system by the end of the 2030s.