Eric Sorensen

More people, especially senior citizens, are seeking energy bill assistance in the Peoria area due to rising costs.

Local aid groups report that even employed individuals struggle to cover their bills amid a high cost of living.

Energy providers Ameren and Exelon reported over a billion dollars in profits last year while customers faced higher costs.

U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen hosted a roundtable to discuss the challenges and has received campaign donations from several energy companies.

PEORIA — The number of people seeking help with their energy bills, particularly senior citizens, has risen in the Peoria area this year, according to information shared at an energy roundtable hosted by U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen on Wednesday.

Sorensen, a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives who represents Peoria, asked groups who offer assistance to those in need of energy assistance what challenges they're seeing as the cost of energy continues to rise for people across the state.

The answers, which came from Peoria Township Supervisor LaTrina Leary, Tazwood Community Services, and St. Vincent de Paul Society, were relatively the same: Fewer and fewer people who have jobs are making enough money to cover all of their bills, much less energy bills alone.

Leary told Sorensen there are a multitude of increased costs, from health care to child care to groceries, that are squeezing people's budgets, making it harder for them to pay their utility bills. Leary also said the biggest increase in people seeking assistance has been in the demographic of people over the age of 62.

In the Peoria area specifically, the high cost of living and average rent costs of about $1,200 a month have put a strain on working people trying to pay their bills, representatives from Tazwood told Sorensen, further saying people cannot afford to live on minimum wage.

Tazwood saw its number of applications for assistance more than double this year after it became Peoria's permanent provider of LIHEAP utility payment assistance after the program faltered with the Peoria Citizens Committee for Economic Opportunity. Tazwood said its applications grew from 11,000 to 26,000 after absorbing Peoria.

Energy companies make billions while people struggle to pay

Notably absent from the roundtable conversation was mentions of the utility providers themselves, specifically Illinois ComEd and Ameren, which serves most of Peoria.

Despite higher energy costs for customers and an increase in the number of people seeking assistance, ComEd, which is a subsidiary of Exelon, and Ameren both made more than $1 billion in profits last year.

Exelon reported an operating income of $5.27 billion in 2025. Ameren reported a net income of $1.4 billion last year.

Both Ameren and Exelon have made campaign donations to Sorensen this year. Other energy companies such as Edison Electric, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, DTE Energy, Dominion Energy, Alliant, Xcel Energy and Constellation Energy also made donations to Sorensen this year, according to federal campaign finance data.

When asked if those companies are charging too much while people are struggling to pay their bills, Sorensen said everyone needs to be held accountable and more energy needs to be put on the grid.

"As a coal power plant gets taken off, we need to make sure that energy source is replaced with something else, but it has increased because we are using more energy than we did before," Sorensen said. "So it is making sure that folks like Ameren, and ComEd in my district and MidAmerica in my district, are good faith partners and making sure that people are able to afford their bills."

Sorensen said making sure that people on fixed incomes, such as senior citizens, can afford their bills is particularly important.

When asked if he thought companies such as Ameren and ComEd were good faith partners in how much they charge people, Sorensen said a lot of the assistance programs exist to help people pay their bills, but they also need to make sure that bills are not going up.

"Electric rates cannot go up," Sorensen said before pivoting to talking about how data centers will impact electric bills.

When asked if the campaign donations and lobbying from companies such as Ameren and ComEd have influenced his energy policies, Sorensen said he was "especially focused on green energy."

"Understanding that we have a climate crisis in our world today, we need to develop these strategies for how we put electricity onto the grid, making sure we're lowering those costs for people at home, and I think it's going to take hard work in Congress to get that done," Sorensen said.