If you run a sawmill, a food processing plant, or any kind of energy-intensive operation, you've probably noticed something uncomfortable over the past few years: your electricity bill keeps going up. Not a little. A lot.
This isn't bad luck or a temporary glitch. It's a structural shift in how energy is priced, delivered, and — increasingly — generated. And understanding what's driving it might change the way you think about your own facility's future..
What's actually happening to electricity prices?
The pressure is even sharper for industrial users than the headline numbers suggest. While U.S. average electricity prices have climbed steadily since 2022, industrial rates specifically have risen roughly 17% over that period — with double-digit year-over-year jumps continuing into 2026, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. Those numbers might not sound dramatic in isolation, but for a facility running continuous, high-draw equipment 24 hours a day, every cent per kilowatt-hour goes directly to the bottom line.
Louisiana has historically been a bright spot in this picture — our industrial rates are among the lowest in the country. But that advantage is eroding faster than most people realize. According to a March 2026 report from the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, base utility rates from Louisiana's largest utility rose more than 30% between 2019 and 2024, and more than $8.5 billion in proposed utility capital projects could push rates a further 40% higher by 2030.
What’s driving that? A lot of it comes down to one thing: the grid is running out of room.
A grid built for a different era
A 2026 report by consulting firm ICF found that the U.S. has roughly 26 GW of surplus generating capacity — just 3% of total installed capacity — and that margin could shrink further by 2030 as demand outpaces infrastructure development. That's historically tight. And demand keeps growing — from electrification of industrial processes, from population growth in the South and Southwest, from the explosion of power-hungry computing infrastructure across the country.
At the same time, the generation mix has shifted. Solar and wind have grown rapidly and continue to expand — but they're fundamentally intermittent. The sun sets; the wind stops. The more the grid depends on them, the more it also needs something reliable and dispatchable to fill the gaps when they go quiet. Building that reliable backup takes time and capital — and the cost of all of it flows through to the businesses and families on the other end of the meter
The rise of the microgrid
This is where something interesting is happening. Large industrial sites, hospitals, manufacturers, and municipalities aren't just watching their electricity bills climb — they're responding by generating their own power.
According to Grand View Research, the global microgrid market was valued at nearly $100 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow substantially through 2033](https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/microgrid-market). Within that market, combined heat and power (CHP) systems — which generate electricity and capture the heat that would otherwise be lost — currently hold the largest revenue share of any microgrid power source. The economics are straightforward: if you can generate your own power on-site, you're insulated from the grid's price swings, aging infrastructure, and storm-related outages.
For energy-intensive operations, this isn't just an efficiency story. It's a margin defense.
What does this mean for businesses with waste streams?
Here's where it gets interesting. Many of the operations most exposed to rising electricity costs — sawmills, lumber yards, food processors, agricultural operations — also happen to generate significant volumes of organic waste that they are currently paying to dispose of.
Wood chips, sawdust, cardboard, food processing residuals: these materials sit at a loading dock or in a dumpster right now, generating a disposal cost. But they also hold energy — energy that, with the right conversion technology, can be turned into on-site electricity and heat.
That's not a theoretical future. It's what's already happening across Louisiana's industrial corridor and biomass sector, which produces roughly 10% of all U.S. wood pellets and has attracted billions of dollars in biomass-to-energy investment in recent years.
The shift is already underway
The companies and facilities that will be best positioned over the next decade aren't the ones waiting for electricity prices to stabilize — they're the ones building independence from the grid while reducing their waste disposal costs at the same time.
The logic is straightforward: if you're an energy-intensive operation that also generates organic waste — wood residue, food processing byproducts, cardboard, agricultural materials — you're sitting on a resource you're currently paying to get rid of. Converting that waste into on-site electricity and heat doesn't require a utility-scale project or a decade of development. It requires the right technology, deployed close to where the waste is already being generated.
At Waste to Energy Systems, that's exactly what the BioHearth® downdraft gasification system is designed to do — turn the disposal problem into the energy solution, on-site and continuously.
The energy bill is not going down. But the facilities that turn their waste into their own power source are building something the grid can't take away from them.
BY ALISSA WOODS & JESSY ALFARO / JUL 7, 2026