What is energy poverty?

energy poverty (noun)

A scenario in which the percentage of income needed to pay for energy necessities is greater than 6% of a household’s income.

One in three American households today experiences energy poverty, or the inability to access sufficient amounts of electricity and other energy sources due to financial constraints.

While Northern states have historically struggled with high heating bills, new research from MIT Sloan finds that energy poverty is now concentrated primarily in the Southeast and Southwest, where extreme heat is creating a greater need for air conditioning.

The report, co-authored by Christopher Knittel, director of MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, traces how U.S. households’ energy use has changed over time by calculating their energy burdens — the percentage of their income that’s used to pay for energy necessities — and plotting where financial strain is resulting in the highest rates of energy poverty.

“It’s the southern part of the U.S that’s least able to respond” to climate change, Knittel said. “As the climate warms, it will reduce how much energy is needed to heat homes in the North but increase, by a large amount, cooling costs in the South. Southern U.S. households are going to suffer.”

‘Energy poverty’ hits US residents more in the South and Southwest, study finds