In 2025, a lot of people across the country faced sudden and significant increases in their energy bills. And often it wasn’t because they had been using more electricity – just that the power had gotten a lot more expensive. What’s driving rising power prices?

In some areas, it’s due to money invested to expand the power supply for big technology companies’ planned artificial intelligence data centers, which may or may not get built. Electric utilities are also asking state regulators to approve charging ratepayers vast sums of money to cover the costs of long-delayed maintenance and upgrades to the electricity grid.

The federal government is part of the picture, too, as the researchers who worked with The Conversation’s Energy + Environment team this year explained.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed earlier this year scrapped clean energy subsidies and promoted fossil fuels, which a number of analyses found will lead to Americans paying higher prices for energy that is worse for the climate. Also raising energy costs are the administration’s moves to reverse appliance efficiency standards and weaken the Energy Star program, which have saved consumers billions of dollars every year for decades.

The administration’s declaration of an “energy emergency” to boost coal power and its actions to slow offshore wind power development add to the costs as well.

Our scholars also found hope, including in a story from the mid-20th century in St. Louis, where public outcry against pollution led to government action and real progress.

Here are a few articles from 2025 that help tell the nation’s developing energy story, as well as some of the articles on other subjects The Conversation readers found most compelling.

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