Harrison Pyros is a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America and the communications coordinator for We Power DC, a coalition fighting for public power in Washington, DC.
AFFORDABILITY REMAINS A TOP ISSUE in political campaigns across the country. In DC, a new angle is gaining steam alongside housing and groceries: utility bills. Since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the price that households pay in DC for their electricity and gas has gone through the roof, throwing the District even further towards an affordability crisis for the people that make this place run. Now, over one fifth of all households are in utility debt to Pepco, with over 50% of all low-income households behind on their bills. For Washington Gas, 15% of customers are in debt to the corporation, with those numbers expected to rise after regulators at the DC Public Service Commission approved a double-digit rate increase for January 2026.
How did we get here?
The cost of energy has shot up, especially for the Mid-Atlantic region, a section of the United States energy grid known as the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) Interconnection. The explosion of data center buildouts, bureaucratic feet-dragging, and Republican cuts to green energy investments all increase the average price of electricity. Natural gas is similar: inflated prices from the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have kept the market both high and unstable for regular households.
While these factors are difficult to control from DC, there are other skyrocketing costs that are approved by a local three-person board here in the District: the Public Service Commission (PSC).
The PSC, chaired by Emile Thompson, regulates DC’s corporate utilities — such as Pepco and Washington Gas — which are entirely shareholder-owned. Most importantly, PSC commissioners must approve rates for what are known as “delivery charges,” or the fees our utilities charge us to supply electricity and gas from the wholesale grid to our doorsteps. These fees, which are meant to be for infrastructure upgrades, have ballooned in the last few years, climbing to unstable and expensive proportions.
As commission majority of the three-person board, Chairman Thompson and Commissioner Ted Trabue have overseen years of rate hikes, approving a $108.6 million rate increase in 2021 and a $123 million rate hike in 2024. Since Thompson was appointed chairman in 2021, delivery fees have increased a drastic $16.59 per month, which shakes out to an additional $200 per year, just for business as usual.
This massive increase was seen by many as a handout to Pepco, which is owned by the Exelon Corporation — a billion-dollar energy firm, headquartered in Chicago, which also owns similar utilities in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The lone dissenting regulator on the PSC, Commissioner Richard Beverly, accused his colleagues of rubber-stamping the case “because Pepco said so.”
Beverly pointed to a lack of compelling evidence that would justify the rate increase, citing little in public benefit and the fact that Pepco was already over-earning with their existing rates. In fact, Pepco’s rates were so high, Beverly found they were earning far above their legal profit margins of 9.3% — meaning that in effect, Pepco was illegally overcharging customers. Thompson and Trabue dismissed his remarks.
It’s worth noting that these massive rate hikes, driven by private profit, would never even be a topic of conversation if DC had a public utility — a utility owned by residents and operated by officials who are accountable to their community. Analyses from the American Public Power Association show that public utilities (like those in Los Angeles, Omaha, Seattle, etc.) prioritize upkeep and maintenance, not overspending on flashy projects, leading to lower rates for consumers. In fact, the APPA finds that public power customers pay 13% less than customers of other utility types. Public utilities are unburdened by the greed of shareholders that demand returns; greed which is passed onto regular households who pay increasing rates so those shareholders and company executives can increase profits.
Thompson and Trabue’s approval of Pepco’s rate increase was such an unfounded hackjob that the DC Court of Appeals vacated the decision, meaning they overturned the PSC’s approval. One main reason: DC’s utility regulators failed to even have an evidentiary hearing, which would force Pepco to prove their rate hike was financially sound and allow other stakeholders to present alternatives and counter evidence to Pepco's claims. This is a blunder so embarrassing it feels like our regulators are allergic to actually regulating. But it also begs the question on their overall integrity, especially since the previous PSC chairman, Willie Phillips, was promoted to chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission after pushing through the Pepco-Exelon merger, to the fanfare of gas lobbyists.
Thompson and Trabue’s track record regulating Washington Gas is somehow even worse. Since 2014, Washington Gas has raised rates by hundreds of millions of dollars for Project Pipes: a years-long effort to dig up methane pipes in DC to solve gas leaks. But gas leaks have only gone up: from 2020 to 2024, leaks increased by 25%, despite higher bills and more disruption. Even worse, Washington Gas’s plan is over budget, and the company is lobbying the PSC to upcharge customers another $215 million for more pipe replacements.
These PSC-approved projects have been so expensive and useless that DC customers now pay far more for the cost of pipes than the actual gas. About 67% of the average Washington Gas bill is only from delivery fees, while 33% is from the actual cost of gas. Thompson and Trabue have essentially approved the profit-driven corporate playbook for gas companies across the country: pour money into replacing pipelines instead of repairing leaks, then pass all the costs onto customers.
These near-senseless rate increases have hit DC households and businesses hard. Despite infrastructure projects like Project Pipes, reliability and gas leaks remain flat, even after hundreds of millions of DC residents’ dollars have been poured into improving these metrics. In short, District households continue to be upcharged for a middling service that has not measurably improved in any sense — safety, reliability, or otherwise.
What has improved are Pepco and Washington Gas’s profits. In 2025, Exelon flaunted the rate hike in DC as a major success, all while a Trump-imposed recession loomed across the District and the country at large. For Washington Gas, their assets have increased a whopping 93% (to $1.43 billion) in just 10 years, despite DC using less gas over time. These increases in corporate profits are almost entirely billed to regular households in the form of approved rate increases, facilitated by Chairman Thompson and Commissioner Trabue.
Outside of overseeing huge rate hikes, Thompson and Trabue have fundamentally failed to meet the moment in our changing energy landscape. Thompson attempted to slow-walk DC’s ability to purchase cheaper, greener energy while failing to properly hold Pepco accountable after the utility illegally messed with solar customers’ credits. Both Thompson and Trabue have sat by the wayside when it comes to developing microgrids, solar, distributed energy resources, and other key infrastructure. In the meantime, the cost of energy in DC has gone up 93.2% in five years: the highest spike in the nation.
Now, both commissioners are seeking reappointments to the PSC, which Mayor Muriel Bowser has submitted to the DC Council. If approved, this would lock Bowser’s appointed regulators in for another four-year term despite her tenure as mayor ending in under a year. (Bowser’s other executive appointments have been plagued by mismanagement, gridlock, and overall poor leadership.)
The DC Council is required to approve both reappointments by late summer, or else the nominations automatically expire. At a time when DC's utility watchdog, the Office of the People’s Counsel, has published a 1,400-page report on the energy affordability crisis, it’s difficult to see councilmembers wanting to reappoint the same leaders under which this crisis has flourished. It helps that We Power DC and its coalition partners continue to organize around the PSC’s failures, turning out more than 100 people at a March Council hearing to make it known that appointing do-nothing commissioners is not politically viable.
DC deserves leaders that are forward-thinking, efficient, and — most of all — focused on the public, not on corporate utilities. The DC Council will need to host a hearing for Thompson and Trabue’s reappointments as Bowser tries to force them through. Pushback from organizers at We Power DC, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and others has been fierce.
We Power DC and coalition partners are keeping the pressure up; we cannot afford to be stuck with useless, short-sighted Bowser appointees a second longer. Everyone has a role to play. Organize with We Power DC, send a letter to the PSC about Pepco, and contact your councilmembers today to let them know that we need new leadership at the PSC and a clean, affordable vision for DC’s energy future.
