Dive Brief:
- Low-income and minority households in the United States' largest cities spend a greater percentage of their income on energy expenses, know as their "energy burden," according to new research from the American Council for an Energy-Efficiency Economy.
- The findings impact not just a household bottom line but also its health: ACEEE said families who face higher energy burdens "experience many negative long-term effects on their health and well-being."
- The report looks to utility policies, expansion of low-income programs, utilization of the Clean Power Plan and prioritization of low-income efficiency outreach as ways to address the disparity.
Dive Insight:
ACEEE said it pulled data used in the report from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 and 2013 American Housing Survey to determine "energy burden values" for 48 of the largest U.S., and specific households within each city.
The reports findings have broad-reaching implications. According to ACEEE, families who spend more of their income on energy "experience many negative long-term effects on their health and well-being," and are "at greater risk for respiratory diseases and increased stress, and they can experience increased economic hardship and difficulty in moving out of poverty."
Across all cities in the sample, ACEEE said the median energy burden was 3.5%, while the median low-income household’s energy burden was more than twice as high, at 7.2%. For a higher-income household, the figure was 2.3%.
"Reducing high energy burden on low-income households is a well-established policy objective at the federal, state, and local levels," ACEEE noted in the report.
ACEEE said low-income households experienced the highest median energy burden, followed by African-American households (5.4%), low-income households living in multi-family buildings (5%), Latino households (4.1%), and renting households (4%).
Midwest Energy News notes that among Southern cities, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta and New Orleans had the highest energy burden on low-income families. Kansas City, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cleveland and Cincinnati were hardest on African American families.
Strategies to reduce the disparity include improving and expanding low-income utility programs, using the Clean Power Plan to prioritize investment in low-income energy efficiency, and develop programs that target low-income multi-family housing. ACEEE also called for additional work to collect, track, and report demographic data on program participation, and wants to see greater utilization of existing programs.