Another winter storm is impacting Minnesotans’ natural gas bills

*Update March 25, 2026: CUB previously posted the below article discussing the rate impacts of Winter Storm Fern, which took place in February 2026. After we published the article, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) held a hearing where additional information came to light about utilities’ cost recovery plans. We have updated our previously published article to account for that additional information. 

In February 2026, Winter Storm Fern dumped snow and ice across large swaths of the southern and northeastern United States, impacting around 220 million people and causing widespread flight delays and electric power outages. The storm also caused temporary but significant spikes in the cost of natural gas. 

At the same time, we in Minnesota experienced bitterly cold weather, with temperatures below 0° Fahrenheit for over a week straight. Just as the price of gas was spiking, Minnesotans were using more of it to heat their homes. 

Gas utilities pass the cost of gas on to their customers through rates. These costs are a “straight pass through,” meaning the utility does not add an upcharge to the gas it purchases to serve customers. Because gas prices are continuously fluctuating based on a variety of factors, utilities are allowed to make automatic rate adjustments on a month-to-month basis through a forward-looking “purchased gas adjustment” (PGA) mechanism. Fluctuations in gas prices are usually minor, meaning many customers may not notice how those PGA adjustments impact their bills on a month-to-month basis under normal circumstances. However, extreme weather events like Winter Storm Fern can cause noticeable impacts, where a spike in the cost of gas can also result in an unexpected (and sometimes large) temporary spike in customer bills.  

Keep reading to see how your bill will be impacted, and how CUB’s past advocacy has protected Minnesotans from even higher gas bills. 

How Winter Storm Fern will impact your gas bill 

Minnesota’s largest gas utilities – CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, Minnesota Energy Resources (MERC), and Great Plains Gas (collectively, the Gas Utilities) – each filed PGA reports that give us a better sense of how monthly bills will be impacted following Winter Storm Fern. The numbers to the right show the increase in cost per therm or dekatherm from January to February 2026.

These numbers suggest the average Minnesota residential gas consumer will be responsible for around $30 in additional February gas costs, as compared to gas costs from the prior month.  

Media coverage of the Storm—along with the original version of this article published by CUB—suggested this (approximate) $30 additional charge would appear on customers’ February or March 2026 gas bills. However, we now know that is incorrect.  

On March 12, 2026, the PUC held a hearing to discuss this matter. At that hearing, each of the Gas Utilities indicated that they do not plan to pass Winter Storm Fern gas costs through to customers immediately. Rather, they will include these costs in their next annual true-up filing, which is due on September 1, 2026. In those filings, the utilities will review any over- and under-collected gas costs incurred over the prior year and recover any under collections via additional charges added to gas bills distributed between September 1, 2026 and August 31, 2027.  Though we will not know the amount of any such charges until the Gas Utilities submit their annual filings, any under collections will at least be spread over a longer time period rather than be recovered via a single billing cycle. 

We are also hopeful the ultimate bill impact of Witner Storm Fern will be less than it might have been thanks to the prior advocacy of CUB and others, the PUC’s actions, and utilities’ improved processes—following a prior, similar weather event: Winter Storm Uri, 

How lessons learned from Winter Storm Uri set us up to better protect Minnesota ratepayers 

Winter Storm Uri was a widespread weather event that brought unusually cold temperatures across much of the country over President’s Day Weekend in February 2021. Increased demand for natural gas, reduced gas supply due to frozen infrastructure in southern states, and gas markets being closed an extra day over a holiday weekend caused gas prices to spike to historic levels. 

Over just five days, CenterPoint, Xcel Gas, MERC, and Great Plains collectively incurred around $660 million in extra costs procuring gas for Minnesota customers. If that $660 million had been passed on to customers through the standard true-up mechanisms, many Minnesotans would have faced a huge extra charge on one or more of their natural gas bills in early 2021. 

Fortunately, the PUC intervened to ensure that sudden bill increase did not happen. After the storm, the PUC opened an investigation to assess whether the utilities acted reasonably when incurring those extra costs and how cost recovery could be adjusted to help reduce rate shock for customers. Following advocacy by the Minnesota Department of Commerce, the Minnesota Office of the Attorney General, and CUB,  the PUC required the utilities, themselves, to pay for about 10% of their Winter Storm Uri-related costs and allowed them to recover the remaining 90% through a surcharge added to customers’ gas bills over an extended time period. Many Minnesotans will continue to see a Winter Storm Uri related charge on their natural gas bill through most of 2026 until those costs are fully recovered. Extending cost recovery over this long time period helped lessen the short-term harm that would have arisen from an unexpected, significant increase to natural gas bills immediately after Uri. Importantly, the PUC prohibited utilities from collecting interest on those extended payment. 

Though 90% cost recovery sounds like (and is) a lot, Minnesota was one of the few states that disallowed utilities from recovering 100% of the higher costs incurred during Winter Storm Uri.  The PUC also took aggressive action to require Minnesota’s gas utilities to adjust their practices to be better prepared for future winter weather events and related price spikes.  Among those actions, the PUC will now require Minnesota’s largest gas utilities to engage in integrated resource planning and to submit reports following gas price spike events detailing what the utility did to try to mitigate the impact those events have on their customers. 

Though gas prices for Winter Storm Fern did not spike to the same degree as in Winter Storm Uri, lessons learned and the PUC’s swift action means that we will have a better sense of how Minnesota’s gas utilities prepared for this latest spike to best protect customers from high gas bills. To the left you’ll find CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, MERC, and Great Plains’ reports to the PUC discussing their actions prior to and during Winter Storm Fern. 

We are grateful that the PUC took action after Winter Storm Uri to help ensure each of the above Gas Utilities had improved plans in place to help shield their customers from rising gas costs during Winter Storm Fern.  

As always, if you are having trouble keeping up with winter energy bills, contact CUB at 651-300-4701 or contact@cubminnesota. You can also set up a free Energy Bill Consultation to talk about ideas to keep both your electric and gas bills low over the long-term.