NYC Sets New Records for Gas Use as Cold Snap Scorches Wallets, Statewide Mandate on Hold

An arctic blast has hammered New York City, exposing the city’s dependence on natural gas and straining utilities—highlighting the uneasy intersection of climate ambition, infrastructural limits, and household expense.

New Yorkers are intimately familiar with winter’s bite, but this February’s frigid grip proved more relentless than most. Between January 23rd and February 7th, the city and its surrounds notched three of their top ten highest natural gas usage days ever, according to National Grid and Con Edison, the region’s chief gas distributors. On February 7th alone, National Grid delivered more gas to Long Island and the Rockaways than on any other day in history, a record that had stood for barely a week.

Behind this cold-data lay the lived reality: a city of steamy radiators, drafty brownstones, and hurried commuters, all of whom seem as united in their distaste for the cold as in their expectation that warmth should be but a boiler’s chug away. As thermostats clicked higher, Con Edison—serving over a million customers in New York City and Westchester—logged its third-highest day of gas delivery, with January as the fourth busiest gas month ever recorded.

This surge in demand, significant in isolation, is supercharged by the fact that roughly 60% of city households rely on gas heat, and nearly 70% employ gas for cooking their daily fare. That the city’s appetite for gas is as much culinary as it is climatic is little comfort, however, as bills have soared alongside consumption. For many, relief from the wind meant pain in the wallet: National Grid warned of a 9.2% bill bump in February, a jump also felt—if less precisely quantified—by Con Edison’s customers.

Utilities, for their part, are not coy about the cause. Jamie McShane, a Con Edison spokesperson, laid blame on “prolonged low temperatures” and a nationwide spike in wholesale natural gas prices, both of which combined to magnify the seasonal financial squeeze. The timing was gustily unfortunate. A state-mandated rate hike took effect in January, after the Public Service Commission gave unanimous assent, compounding the strain for households already reeling from fixed incomes or pandemic-era recovery.

It is not just the home heaters that binge on gas; much of the city’s electricity still comes from gas-fired power stations, meaning New Yorkers pay twice for the privilege—once to heat, again to illuminate. Saving energy, as public service announcements unfailingly remind, is both virtuous and self-serving. Con Edison gently admonishes users to dust radiators, open curtains, and set thermostats to a “comfortable, safe” minimum. The federal government, meanwhile, claims that a mere 7-10 degree tweak, when one is away, could shave bills by a tenth—a small solace when the mercury is below freezing.

The longer-term challenge, however, transcends mere thermodynamic advice. New York State, under Governor Kathy Hochul, had slated a phase-out of natural gas in new buildings beginning this year, a move meant to decarbonise city blocks at scale. Yet political headwinds—chiefly, concerns about affordability and feasibility—prompted the governor to punt implementation until 2027. This delay keeps nearly two million city households firmly tethered to the gas grid for the foreseeable future.

The city’s cold snap does more than inflate heating bills; it underscores the paradox at the heart of New York’s “climate-forward” ambitions: a metropolis publicly committed to green transition but privately addicted to fossil-powered comfort. Despite big talk and bigger targets, the infrastructure still answers most reliably to the turn of a gas valve—a fact laid bare whenever the weather turns truly punishing.

Colder comfort, delayed transition

Across the Atlantic, cities such as Paris and Berlin have weathered winter peaks thanks to broader use of district heating, renewables, and government-brokered price caps. Closer to home, states like California have moved faster to ban new gas connections, though even there, grid stresses and consumer unease shadow the transition. What sets New York apart is the scale of its building stock, the vintage of its housing, and the relentless spike in energy prices whenever conditions turn arctic.

For the city’s poorest and most vulnerable, these record-breaking gas days have an unambiguous valence: higher likelihood of “heating or eating” choices, scramble for bill assistance, and more shut-off warnings—problems that defy easy solution. Local advocacy groups have sounded alarms about inequity embedded in energy transitions, urging not only swifter upgrades but also robust social safety nets.

The utilities themselves are caught in a bind. Many of their capital investments are predicated on long-lived gas infrastructure at a time when policy, investor, and public sentiment all tilt toward electrification. The result: enormous sunk costs in pipelines and plants that may, come the 2030s and 2040s, sit half-idle, costing ratepayers for decades. Yet, as this month has amply demonstrated, old infrastructure delivers with a dependability that still eludes nascent alternatives on the iciest days.

Federal data show the pattern is not unique to Gotham: winter storms across swathes of the US Midwest and Northeast have periodically driven up gas consumption, spiking wholesale prices and exposing the grid’s brittleness. National Grid and Con Edison’s stories are mirrored by utility giants in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Policymakers talk of “resiliency” and “diversified supply”, yet the old story persists—cold drives demand, demand drives price.

New York’s great challenge will be maintaining reliability and affordability as it decarbonises—no small task for a city famed equally for volatility and ambition. At present, neither cold statistics nor warm rhetoric alter the immediate equation: gas keeps millions warm, but also entrenches fiscal and climate vulnerabilities. Transition will almost certainly not run on budget or schedule.

If the city is to reconcile its green ambitions with public comfort (not to mention systemic resilience), it will require far more than thermostatic vigilance or gubernatorial timidity. Markets, regulators, builders, and households must eventually decide: how much cost, and what level of risk, are they willing to shoulder in pursuit of carbon zero? For New Yorkers, the next record-setting cold snap may offer less a warning than a hard lesson in infrastructure’s inertia—and in winter, that lesson always arrives sooner than one expects. ■