Solar panels power an all electric house in Croton-on-Hudson
Chandu Visweswariah talks about his all-electric, zero-carbon house in Croton-on-Hudson May 7, 2025.
- By the end of February, 1.2 million New York utility customers were behind at least two months on their bills, a total of $1.8 billion in arrears.
- Utilities blamed a cold winter, but grassroots energy groups said costs to repair leaky gas lines are hitting consumers.
- The NY HEAT Act, a bill in the legislature, would speed New York’s transition from gas to electric, helping the state achieve its climate goals.
- Plugging gas leaks is costly, but is necessary to ensure safety and reliability, utilities said.
Surging heating costs this winter saddled New Yorkers with monthly bills double and triple what they were last year.
By the end of February, some 1.2 million customers were behind at least two months on their bills, a total of $1.8 billion in arrears, levels not seen since the pandemic. More than 400,000 received shutoff notices.
Gov. Kathy Hochul took a swipe at Con Edison when, in the midst of the bill surge, the utility announced it was seeking double-digit rate hikes. “The cost of living is too damn high and New Yorkers need more money in their pockets,” she said. Angry ratepayers turned up at town halls across the state to find out why their gas bills were skyrocketing.
The message from the utilities? Cold weather means higher bills and this was an extremely cold winter.
But grassroots groups weren’t buying it. They point to a less obvious culprit they say has been raising bills for years, behind the scenes — natural gas. More specifically, the hundreds of millions of dollars utilities spend each year to repair leaky pipelines — a cost picked up by ratepayers.
These groups teamed with some of the state’s leading environmental groups to deliver the message to Hochul and state legislators: gas has got to go.
They’re backing a measure — the NY HEAT (Home Energy Affordable Transition) Act — that would speed the state’s transition off gas as a heating source so the state can achieve its climate goals. It would, among other things, encourage utilities to stop spending enormous sums to fix gas lines and nudge more customers to electric heat.
“It’s a critical moment and there are many tools that the state needs to bring to bear to address the energy affordability crisis that we’re facing,” said Jessica Azulay, the executive director of Alliance for a Green Economy.
The movement is attracting grassroots support across the state.
Activist groups in the Hudson Valley and Rochester are pushing for the public takeover of their utilities. Leading the effort in Rochester, a city with one of the highest energy burdens in the nation (calculated by the percentage of income that goes toward energy bills,) is Metro Justice, a civil rights group with a history of fighting police brutality and championing a higher minimum wage.
They don’t see the logic in continuing to fix and replace gas lines when the state should be focused on transitioning to cleaner energy sources. “It’s really like digging a hole with our money and setting it on fire because spending this money is actively making New York’s climate law impossible to implement,” said Michelle Wenderlich, Metro Justice’s organizer.
Republicans seem unlikely to budge, calling the NY HEAT Act radical energy policy.
“The NY HEAT Act is nothing short of reckless,” said State Sen. Mario Mattera, a Long Island Republican. “It strips away the right of New Yorkers to choose how to heat their homes and will force working families and businesses to spend thousands they do not have.”
Utilities find themselves in the middle. Even as they create incentives for customers to use electric, they have an obligation to keep their gas infrastructure safe or risk disaster.
Why plugging gas leaks is so costly
The state Public Service Commission requires the state’s utilities to fix and repair leaking or aging gas lines. Every three years, utilities must update their gas planning procedures to show that they comply with state mandates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Governor Hochul has made it crystal clear that we need to keep energy costs low — and she has asked that we use every tool at our disposal to ensure that happens,” PSC spokesman James Denn said.
New York utilities spent $2.4 billion replacing leaky gas pipes and expanding gas service to new customers in 2022 and 2023, according to a February report by Synapse Energy Economics for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
During those two years, utilities added 500 miles of new pipe to gas systems across the state. Most of that — 427 miles — was done by Con Ed and National Grid, which supply gas to millions of customers in New York City, Westchester County and Long Island.
Con Ed said it provides incentives for customers to switch to electric, but heading off leaks by replacing cast-iron and steel pipes with durable plastic ensures system safety. “As our state and region make this transition, we have an obligation to keep our gas delivery system safe and reliable,” spokesman Allan Drury said.
Central Hudson has been replacing gas mains at a pace of 15 miles per year. The utility will spend around $200 million over the next three years when a decade-long replacement effort wraps up — with the tab picked up by its 88,000 gas customers.
Like all utilities, Central Hudson is obligated to repair gas lines that connect to a main within 100 feet of a customer’s property at no cost. But the utility is not, with a few exceptions, expanding its gas pipeline system. And it’s studying whether its pipelines could be used to move lower or zero carbon fuels like hydrogen blended with natural gas.
“The natural gas system is still a critical component of the energy system in New York,” utility spokesman Joseph Jenkins said. “As of right now in New York, customers can choose how to heat their homes. And as long as we have customers that can choose to heat their homes with natural gas we have a regulatory requirement — and a basic human requirement — to maintain that system and keep it as safe and reliable as we can.”
A March study by Switchbox, a climate research group, said the state’s utilities plan to replace 15% of aging gas pipelines at a cost between $34 billion and $65 billion. They’re doing so even though demand for gas is decreasing, due to warmer temperatures, energy efficiency and electrification, according to the report.
The study says the state’s utilities will spend $43 billion fixing more than 7,000 miles of leaky pipe by 2050. But, the report adds, the total could be reduced by nearly $5 billion by, among other things, outfitting homes with heat pumps and induction stoves.
Pipe replacement projects, the study concluded, “are the primary driver of rising gas bills for New York consumers.”
It’s unclear what percentage of monthly bills go toward gas infrastructure.
But a January report by Azulay’s Alliance for a Green Economy found that the average monthly customer cost has increased at every major gas utility since 2022. For Con Ed, the average went from $205 to $253. At Central Hudson $138 to $157.
Lawmakers push for public takeover
The New York HEAT Act, first introduced in 2021, would keep energy costs at 6% of household income for residential customers. And it would eliminate the 100-foot rule that requires utilities to provide gas service to customers who ask for it — a cost that’s passed on to ratepayers. And, after Dec. 31, 2026, utilities could not expand gas pipelines into areas where gas is not currently available.
Hochul did not include the measure in this year’s $254 billion state budget. The bill passed the Senate but is awaiting action in the Assembly.
“We can’t afford to pay high energy bills just to fund out-of-date pipelines that make us sick,” said Stephan Edel, Executive Director of NY Renews, a coalition that includes hundreds of community activists across the state.
It’s one of several legislative measures that take aim at state utilities and their profits. Democrats Michelle Hinchey in the Senate and Sarahan Shreshta in the Assembly are sponsoring a measure that would replace Central Hudson with the publicly-run Hudson Valley Power Authority.
It’s backed by the grassroots group For the Many. The group’s political coordinator, Daniel Atonna, said he saw predictability in utilities’ response to angry customers during a winter of high bills.
“What we’re basically saying is, ‘No, we’re not going to play this game anymore,’” Atonna said. “We’re actually going to harness that energy and that anger and point it towards a direction where we can actually pass this piece of legislation.”
State Sen. James Skoufis, a Hudson Valley Democrat, is backing a measure that would cap utility profits at 4%.
“Ten percent of your bill is profit and the vast majority of business would kill for a 4 or 5% margin, nevermind in their wildest dreams, a 10% margin on their goods and services,” Skoufis said.
Inside one Hudson Valley customer’s leap to electric
In 2008, Chandu Visweswariah, a former IBM computer engineer, built a house in Croton-on-Hudson that relies entirely on electricity for energy — solar panels on the roof and in the backyard, ground source heat pumps.
With solar panels providing electricity for his cars, he says he drives for free. “The little secret here is that all of this stuff pays for itself over time but the period of return of your money is different for different investments,” he said.
Visweswariah has long been opposed to fossil fuels and bristles when others suggest they offer a bridge to a renewable energy future when wind, solar and water will deliver the bulk of our energy needs. “They’re bridges to nowhere and they will take on a life of their own if we permit them to,” he said.
He retired from IBM in 2013 and started his own business consulting renewable companies.
For the past six years he and his wife have run a nonprofit – CURE 100 (Communities United to Reduce Emissions ) that consults homeowners on how to live carbon-free while making the transition to cleaner electrical appliances. It’s grown to 12 chapters in Westchester County.
In conversations with homeowners weighing the idea, he ditches talk about climate risk and parts per million of carbon dioxide. “People’s eyes glaze over and it just doesn’t make any progress,” he said.
Instead, he talks money.
“Every month you save this much in your energy bill,” he said. “And, ‘oh by the way, the air inside your own home is cleaner if you don’t have an oil furnace or gas cooking appliance and this may be causing asthma for your kids.’”
It’s not an easy sell. Upfront costs to make the switch can be costly. The Switchbox report estimates the median cost to electrify a household in New York is nearly $28,000 but costs could vary by region.
Sometimes, years go by before he hears back from homeowners.
“What we tell people is at some point your gas furnace will conk out,” Visweswariah said. “At some point your oil furnace will start having trouble. At some point your cooking range is not going to work well. We want to plant a seed right now so that you do the right thing when that happens.”
It’s worked for him. With his upfront costs paid off, his only utility bill is a $20 service charge for electricity. “Yeah, it’s as good as it gets to not have bills,” he said.
Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA Today Network’s New York State team. He’s won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that’s included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at tzambito@lohud.com.