Report
October 17, 2025
Brattle Contributes to Berkeley Lab Report Assessing Recent Trends in Electricity Prices Across the US
Prepared for Berkeley Lab
Brattle experts contributed to a recent Berkeley Lab study assessing the drivers behind recent trends in retail electricity prices across the United States. The report documents historical pricing changes at the national and state levels, identifies the key drivers of those changes, and uses several state-specific case studies to further illustrate the findings.
Key takeaways from the report include:
- National average retail electricity prices have tracked inflation in recent years.
- As a share of household expenditures, electricity costs have decreased over time.
- State-level retail electricity price trends have varied widely, though only a limited number of states experienced material increases when adjusting for inflation.
- Key drivers of retail price changes include transmission and distribution expenditures, extreme weather and wildfire-related costs, natural gas price fluctuations, renewable portfolio standard requirements, and net energy metering policies.
- Load growth has tended to depress retail electricity prices in recent years, though it is unclear to what extent this will hold in the future.
- Market-based investment in wind and solar generation has not driven retail price increases.
“Recent Retail Electricity Price Trends: What Do We Know… or Think We Know?” includes contributions from Principal Ryan Hledik, Managing Energy Associate Long Lam, and Energy Specialist Audrey Yan. The full report is available below.
