American households struggle with sky-high energy bills during extreme summer heat

As summer temperatures have soared across the nation, so have electric bills as air conditioners work overtime. Every year, nearly 3 million American households have their electricity shut off because of unpaid bills. We hear from people dealing with this issue and John Yang speaks with Sanya Carley, professor of energy policy and city planning at the University of Pennsylvania, to learn more.
John Yang:
As summer temperatures have soared across the nation, so have electric bills as air conditioners work overtime. A USA Today analysis of government forecasts projected an average monthly bill this summer of $173. Every year, nearly 3 million American households have their electricity shut off because of unpaid bills. We hear from a handful of people trying to navigate all this.
Lisa Harjo, Bullhead City, Arizona:
My name is Lisa Harjo. I’m from Bullhead City, Arizona, and my energy bills have doubled from the previous year.
Morgan Tate, Silver Spring, Maryland:
My name is Morgan Tate and I live in Silver Spring, Maryland. I’ve lived in this area for seven years, and I’ve never had a summer this hot.
David Hambrick, Dallas:
I’m David Hambrick. I am a registered nurse from Dallas. Today the heat factor is going to be like 112 or 114 some ridiculous amount. It really affects the medical condition that I have. And so we’ve got our run our air conditioner more than normal.
Lisa Harjo:
In previous years, I would run it at about 76. Now I usually will run it at about 80. If it’s a really hot day, I will run it at about 82. I tell my daughter, just walk outside and come back in. It’ll feel good in here.
David Hambrick:
I’m fighting through the disability program, so my wages have been cut in half, and so trying to manage increases in utilities on less of a salary is extraordinarily difficult.
Morgan Tate:
I have taken money out of my grocery bill. I’ve taken money out of my restaurant bill.
Lisa Harjo:
I am planning on renting out a room, because that is all the only way I foresee having enough money to offset these huge bills. I only pay my water bill every other month, because if I try to pay that and my electric bill, then I’m in trouble.
David Hambrick:
We’ve moved, you know, to generics, except for my strawberries, Smuckers strawberry preserves. That’s my one luxury.
Lisa Harjo:
I literally have to decide whether I want to have air conditioning or have something to eat.
Morgan Tate:
One of the things that I like to do in order to stay cool and save money is, you know, go to the mall, go to the library, go to some place that I know is going to be air conditioned already.
David Hambrick:
The first thing we do is just completely almost black out the house.
Lisa Harjo:
I have insulation in every window in my house so that I can keep it dark and try to keep any air from escaping as much as possible.
Morgan Tate:
I have found that when I’m able to mitigate some of this using ice packs, using fans instead of my central AC, that I save about $30 per month on my utility bill, and that can make a big difference.
David Hambrick:
This is hitting us pretty hard people, if they don’t see it or until it affects them, you know, they don’t really understand.
Lisa Harjo:
It’s a really horrible feeling because, you know, nobody likes to not have enough money to pay their bills. You know. People just think that because we chose at some point to live in a hot state that we should just suck it up. And that’s just, you know, that’s just not right.
John Yang:
People struggling with both the heat and their electric bills. Sanya Carley is professor of energy policy and city planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Sanya, I know you research coping techniques. How typical are what we just heard?
Sanya Carley, University of Pennsylvania Kleinman Center for Energy Policy: Unfortunately, John, it’s very typical. At the energy justice lab, we find that over half of all low income households engage in some of these so called coping strategies, many of which we just heard about. These strategies are both financial in nature and behavioral in nature.
We also know that over half of all low income households engage in many of these at once, and it’s the households that have particularly vulnerable members that reside within it, such as young children under the age of five, or those who are medically compromised or elderly that are more likely to engage in these kinds of strategies.
We found that one in four households use some kind of risky temperature strategy in order to cope. Now here, these are things such as burning trash in your home or running a space heater, which we know to be one of the leading causes of fire in the United States, or opening your oven or flaring your gas stove for space heating, or running your dryer, but disconnecting the dryer vent and putting somebody behind it in order to warm your body temperature.
We also know that one in four households carry debt across their energy bills, and approximately one in five households engage in this kind of bill balancing that you heard about just a minute ago, where one might pay down one energy bill or one mortgage bill, for example, one month, and then pay down a different bill the next month, and approximately one in five households have to forego paying for food in order to pay their utility bills.
John Yang:
What are the consequences of either not having air conditioning or cutting back on the air conditioning to save money?
Sanya Carley:
It can lead to a variety of mental and physical health consequences, and some of the consequences can be quite dire, in the severe but not at all rare case, it can lead to death.
Now, just generally, if you don’t have access to energy, you don’t have access to electricity, for example, there are a variety of other impacts. You wouldn’t be able to use your electronic devices, such as your phone to seek help or to find information. You can’t run a refrigerator, which limits the amount of healthy and perishable food that you can keep in your house. And you can’t run an electronic medical device, such as an oxygen concentrator, which you might rely on for your life.
But there are also developmental outcomes, particularly for young children who reside in these homes. In some places, if a house is deemed not habitable, if you can’t actually live within those conditions, then that’s grounds for a child to be removed from the home and put in alternative care until the house has is can resume their electricity use.
John Yang:
Are some people more affected by this than other people?
Sanya Carley:
Yes, there are differences. We know that increasingly it’s common for more hot states to suffer from energy and security more than others. We also know that there are disparities by housing conditions. So those who have older homes, draftier homes, less efficient homes tend to suffer from energy and security much more. And then there are social, demographic and specific populations.
So those households that have vulnerable members that reside within, again, young children under the age of five or somebody who relies on an electronic medical device, they’re much more likely to be energy insecure. We also find racial disparities, racial and ethnic disparities, where we find that households of color are significantly more likely to both suffer from Energy and Security and be disconnected.
John Yang:
What programs are there to either help pay the electric bills or to protect them from being disconnected?
Sanya Carley:
Sure, I like to think of this in three bins, if you will. The first is kind of preventative measures. The second is more emergency relief, and the third is more of kind of long term maintenance. In the preventative measures, I would put things that lower the energy bill. So weatherization assistance is one classic example where essentially you’re helping a home weatherize to seal holes in the wall or gaps, or to repair or to swap out their appliances.
Residential solar is another preventative solution that essentially can lower one’s energy bill over time. The emergency assistance one could seek out local bill assistance through their local government, but also the federal government offers the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. And then finally, there’s disconnection protections. These are at the state level. States declare whether there are certain times that utilities cannot disconnect certain customers if, for example, the weather is above or below a certain temperature or it’s a certain time of year.
Now, I’ll just point out that these policies are wildly inconsistent across the states. It’s a patchwork, if you will. We know that less than half of all states actually have heat based protection, so it’s far more common for them to have cold based protections. So there’s not only this patchwork, but it’s also the case that these policies tend to favor, or at least not be sensitive to the increasing incidence of extreme heat.
John Yang:
Sanya Carley of the University of Pennsylvania, thank you very much.
Sanya Carley:
Thank you so much.