EJ Antoni: “E.J. Antoni: U.S. utility prices down 1.5% since Iran war began”

As is often the case, I cannot verify this claim made by EJ Antoni, Chief Economist for Heritage Foundation. What is true is that the price of natural gas (piped) has declined. But not for electricity. And roughly 42% of households are heated/cooled by electricity (a rising share), compared to 47% for natural gas. In addition, for lighting etc. you’d need to draw on electricity.

Figure 1: CPI natural gas (piped) (blue), CPI electricity (red), simple arithmetic average (black), all s.a., in logs 2025M01=0. Source: BLS and author’s calculations.