More people are facing energy insecurity. How do we help them?
New government figures find that even before the Iran war, one in three households faced some form of energy insecurity. Not only did people have trouble paying their heating and cooling bills but a separate study found the problem affected their mental health. Advocates are trying to bring energy insecurity to light and help those in need.
The definition
The U.S. Energy Information Administration defines energy insecurity as the inability to adequately meet basic household energy needs.
Factors that influence this include the weather, the type of energy and how drafty the household space is.
It used to be that an energy burden was defined as ten percent of household income. However, The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has decreased the threshold to more than six percent.
Federal figures
According to preliminary reports from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, one in three U.S. households are struggling to pay energy bills. The Conversation reports the reality is likely even worse.
It says, “The latest tranche of data was collected in 2024 and released in March 2026, but full results won’t be available for some time. The preceding survey was taken in 2020, but results weren’t finalized until August 2025.”
In 2024, 43.6 million American households reported experiencing some form of energy insecurity, or 32.9 percent. The Conversation reports in 2015 it was 31.3 and because of COVID cash relief in 2020 it was 27.2 percent.
With energy prices up dramatically in 2026, because of the Iran war, more people are likely suffering.
In 2019, AEEE studied which cities have the highest energy burdens.
In 2019, Cincinnati had an energy burden among low-income households of about 13 percent.
Who is affected?
In the book Powerless: The People’s Struggle for Energy, co-author and researcher Diana Hernández says the hundreds of thousands of people who face energy insecurity are low-income and disproportionately households of color; Black, Latino and Indigenous populations, as well as renters, households with children, people living in older homes, people living in poor insulated homes, rural dwellers.”
But as time goes on, Hernández finds there is now a wider net including more white households, middle income, seniors and working age groups.
Hernández is associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University. She is also the founding principal investigator of the Energy Equity, Housing and Health Program and the co-director of the Energy Opportunity Lab at the Center on Global Energy Policy.
In 2018 She launched the Energy Equity Housing and Health National Survey, which included hundreds of in-depth interviews. This helped her better understand the economic, physical and coping components of energy insecurity.
“There are so many stories, but I’ll tell you one about a gentleman that I met in Texas and I went to his home. His pseudonym in the book is Oscar and he is homebound. He was dealing with a heart condition and required a CPAP machine for sleeping as well as an oxygen concentrator during the day. There was a pink slip on the sofa and when I asked what it was, he explained that it was a disconnection notice,” Hernández says.
The 2026 report Measuring What Matters: Rethinking Energy Insecurity Metrics says, “Utility disconnections for nonpayment are discrete, time-stamped events that offer a direct, observable indicator for the most severe form of energy insecurity. While few studies directly quantify the impact of utility disconnections, recent efforts began to address this gap through data-driven tracking tools.”
If the utility company provides data, the information is available on the Utility Disconnections Dashboard, developed by the Energy Justice Lab.
From June 2014-May 2025 Ohio had 4,389,665 disconnections.
Between July 31, 2025 and March 31, 2026 AES Ohio reports in Montgomery County there were 334 disconnects “combined with a high same-day reconnect rate, indicating that while service interruptions occurred, they were resolved quickly. AES Ohio says it is helping residents, who don’t qualify for state help, face financial challenges with its Gift of Power program.
During that same time frame (July 31, 2025-March 31, 2026) Duke Energy reports in Hamilton County, both residential and non-residential; there were 21,182 disconnections. Most were resolved quickly. Duke’s Share the Light Fund is a program where employees and customers make voluntary contributions directed to customers in need. In 2025 it distributed more than $768,000 to eligible Ohio customers.
Energy Insecurity also can affect mental health
Hernández told Brick by Brick, “Energy and security is associated with a feeling and that feeling is drain and depletion. People describe themselves as feeling financially drained, psychologically drained, physically drained by this experience of trying to keep up with a circumstance that is very challenging in all of the ways.”
A variety of data seeks to prove that. New research from Georgia Tech reports a link between those struggling to afford energy and higher rates of anxiety and depression.
Researchers found 43 percent out of 187 million adults, reported experiencing at least one form of energy insecurity in the past year.
To come to that conclusion, they used 2022-2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey which questioned adults about economic and social conditions.
They measured energy insecurity in three ways: inability to pay full or partial energy bills, keeping the home at unsafe or unhealthy temperatures to save money and forgoing essential expenses (like food or medicine) to pay for energy costs.
Possible Solutions
Hernández says we need to increase awareness of energy assistance and make it easier for people to apply. She says only 17 percent of eligible households are enrolling, compared to 82 percent for SNAP benefits.
“I remember being in Memphis and the application. I had very, very good vision but the font size must have been a six-point font size. And one of the people that was sitting in the waiting room, which is how I was interacting and recruiting for this study, asked me to help them just because they couldn’t see the font size.”
So, something as simple as type size on an application could deter people from getting energy assistance.
Looking at local data will help decrease energy insecurity, according to Hernández. She has been working with the New York City Health Department. The reason why this is important is health departments “have access to regularly interval data collection cycles….and just in December, we issued a report that kind of laid out what could we do at the really local level to address energy and security.”
One of the solutions was to streamline the application processes, so when people applied for one program, they were enrolled in all programs.
She also highlights the importance of weatherization and energy efficiency. Brick by Brick has reported on several local programs including:
The Dayton Energy Collaborative featured in the Brick by Brick episode on Preservation
People Working Cooperatively and in the Brick by Brick episode on Toxic Housing
Working in Neighborhoods and a Brick by Brick episode on Sustainability.
Limitations
As the cost of energy continues to climb, people are having a difficult time paying for it.
The price of natural gas and home heating oil have both spiked.
In 2025 electricity rates in Ohio rose 5-10 percent and as much as 15-20 percent in Cincinnati and Dayton.
Analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith, managing director at the global investment banking firm Jefferies, covers the power utilities and clean energy sectors and told Brick by Brick, “I think what we’re seeing, especially in the Mid-Atlantic of late, there are bills going up in a rather acute way, driven by the factors that we’re talking about that are data centers, right? First and foremost, and again, in a world in which it’s not just the need to drive inflation because construction materials and the sector itself is building out rapidly, but in this way, electricity bills are going up directly because they’re competing with data centers for electricity.”
Looking to the future
One recommendation to decrease energy insecurity from Measuring What Matters: Rethinking Energy Insecurity Metrics is “Adopting a holistic set of metrics which would better help to understand energy insecurity and lead to more effective solutions, such as curtailing utility disconnections and expanding household access to assistance programs.”
Author and researcher Diana Hernández would like household energy to be declared a human right. “You can’t have the rights of housing and the right to health without energy…the law is a really important lever for thinking about this because there’s the interpretability around the legal standards like just reasonable and non-discriminatory rates.”
She says “rate reform and rate redesign are important elements of the path forward…every person that I spoke to, honestly, they took pride in being able to pay their utility bill…this is not a question of getting over, but people were literally overwhelmed by bills that they could not afford.”
Were you surprised by the number of households that are energy insecure? As the cost of energy increases will this problem gain more media attention? And will additional help become available? We want to build community around context and solutions in our cities. Your feedback is very important to the effort, as we continue to dig deeper into the responses to some of our most pressing social issues, including the housing crisis. Click on the green button below to take a short survey to help reinforce and refine our work. Thank you.
Ann Thompson – Host, Producer
Over the last thirty years in Cincinnati, Ann Thompson has brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her reporting. She has reported and anchored for WVXU, WKRC, WCKY, WHIO-TV and Metro Networks and freelanced for NPR, CBS and ABC Radio. Her work has been recognized by the Associated Press and she has won awards from the Association of Women in Communications and the Alliance for Women in Media. She is a former News Director and Operations Manager. Ann has reported from India, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Belgium as part of fellowships. Ann thinks of the Brick by Brick project as “journalism for good.” She serves as host and producer. Ann lives in Anderson Township with her husband Scott. They have two boys. Jake graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2022 and Kurt attends West Point.
