A Framework for Achieving Energy Equity

Guest

Diana Hernández

Faculty Affiliate and co-Director of the Energy Opportunity Lab

Transcript

Diana Hernández: I was sitting in people’s living rooms trying to understand the relationship between housing and health, equipped to look at crowding and mold and lead and asbestos, but totally surprised by the energy stories that came up again and again. That was really the root of conceptualizing energy insecurity.

Jason Bordoff: While we often associate energy poverty with developing nations, the reality is that tens of millions of Americans struggle to pay their energy bills every month. Oftentimes, they forgo heating or cooling their homes in order to pay rent or buy food. And ultimately, they risk losing access to energy altogether through utility shutoffs. For families living in inadequate housing with poor insulation and inefficient appliances, energy insecurity impacts health, comfort and quality of life. For some, government assistance programs are a lifeline. Yet despite rising energy rates, federal energy assistance programs like LIHEAP are in danger of losing funding. So what policy solutions could address the systemic causes of energy insecurity? How can government assistance be reframed to better support and empower energy insecure households? And will the transition to clean energy alleviate or worsen the problem of energy insecurity?

This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I’m Jason Bordoff. Today on the show, Professor Diana Hernández. Diana is an associate professor at Columbia University and she co-directs the Energy Opportunity Lab right here at the Center on Global Energy Policy, and she is just out with a fantastic new book, “Powerless: The People’s Struggle for Energy,” which she co-authored with Jennifer Laird, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Lehman College. It was released this year in April. Diana joined me to discuss the book, which documents the lived experiences of energy insecure Americans. We talked about her personal story growing up in subsidized housing in the Bronx and how that informs her research. We explored how innovative policy solutions might address the inadequacies of our current energy assistance programs, and we discuss the connections between energy justice and the clean energy transition. I really hope you enjoy this conversation.

Diana Hernández, welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange. So great to have you on the program to talk about your work.

Diana Hernández: Thank you, Jason. So excited to be here.

Jason Bordoff: And so great to have you as a colleague and have you as part of the Center on Global Energy Policy. The work you do is fascinating and you’re a phenomenal person, so just thanks for being part of the organization and congratulations on the new book, “Powerless,” which I was just rereading again this morning and just an incredibly valuable contribution, I think, to a topic we don’t talk about nearly enough. So in the world of energy, there’s a lot of discussion of energy access, energy poverty, and when people say words like that, I think they tend to think of places like Africa. They don’t think of our neighborhood in Harlem or other areas of the United States. So just talk a little bit for our listeners about your book and your life’s work.

Diana Hernández: Yeah, well, Jason, such a pleasure to be in conversation with you and to have the opportunity to just be on the podcast. So yeah, I mean definitely I think you kind of hit it on the nose. We think about people that are impoverished and lack access to something as basic as energy in other places, these are remote issues and they affect other people in other places, but in the shadows of what is happening in the US and in other developed economies, people that are poor and/or have limited access to high quality housing, for instance, do experience issues. I call it energy insecurity, and I can kind of explain why that terminology is important. Other people call it energy poverty. There’s been kind of evolutions around fuel poverty or energy burden. The work that I do in talking about it as household energy insecurity is really rooted in a parallel to food insecurity and in many parts of both academic research, but also policy, food insecurity receives a lot of attention, and it’s understood that it’s two-pronged. One is about the quality of food that people have access to and the ability to afford it. And the same thing is true around energy. There’s an affordability aspect to it that’s so fundamental where people just don’t have the financial wherewithal to be able to pay their utility bills. And those utility bills have been increasing and kind of inching up, and that’s part of what’s driving it, but also more drawdowns on household budgets. And so the affordability aspect is there are many different reasons for it, and then there’s housing quality issues, and some of that is about the systems of a home.

Jason Bordoff: So it’s not, when you said food, it’s quality and affordability. There’s healthy food, non-healthy food. But energy, it’s like you have heat, you have the lights go on you, so you’re not talking about the quality of the energy, you’re talking about

Diana Hernández: The home as the system through which energy flows, and that is actually what delivers comfort. For instance, we’re in a hot room right now, right? Yeah. Air conditioning is not

Jason Bordoff: Working in this room,

Diana Hernández: And it’s actually in those instances where you realize what it means to be in a room that ought to be at a comfortable temperature, and it isn’t. Now when that intersects with poverty, that actually sometimes is by choice so that people are under consuming energy in order to save on their utility bills, and that is a big driver. Destiny Knox’s work really talks about

Jason Bordoff: One of our former faculty affiliates.

Diana Hernández: That’s right. And the energy equity gap where people are waiting six degrees for the temperature outdoors to be six degrees higher before they’re actually turning on their air conditioning units. That’s an example of what,

Jason Bordoff: And in your definition of energy insecurity, if you’re accepting discomfort, it is uncomfortably hot to sleep or whatever, you don’t want to turn the air conditioning on because it’s expensive. Is that captured in your definition, sort of foregoing those comforts or basic needs, however you define it?

Diana Hernández: It is. So coping is a big dimension. So there’s an economic dimension. There’s the home, the physical dimension of energy insecurity, and then there’s the adaptive coping strategies that households use to get by. And some of those are juggling bills. And that is the difficult choices of poverty where people have to choose between the basics around food, medicine, clothing for children, etc., and their utility bill. Then some of it is discomfort, and some of that is based on the housing conditions. And then some of it is just deprivation, like depriving oneself of the use of energy because of the affordability challenges oftentimes.

Jason Bordoff: Meaning living in uncomfortable or even dangerous cold weather because you don’t have access to heat. You either can’t afford it, you need for food or other things, or maybe have been disconnected because of unpaid bills or something else.

Diana Hernández: Yeah, I mean then one of the things that comes out of this book, so kind of delineating the essential elements of energy insecurity, I come from a public health background. I’m a trained sociologist.

Jason Bordoff: Tell people about how you came to do this work, which I think you started 20 years ago or something like that, 15 years ago,

Diana Hernández: It feels like that

Jason Bordoff: With, as I recall it, a home-based study in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which kind of brought you to this work.

Diana Hernández: So I trained in sociology through and through undergrad, and I got my PhD at Cornell and I was studying inequality, and those were the kind of conceptual roots of my work. And in a really open-minded way in graduate school, I just decided to take on this research project that my advisor just couldn’t do, and she was like, I would do this project, but I don’t have the time, so why don’t you do it? And I really did go in with an open mind and what I learned to be kind of an open heart in doing this work because I was sitting in people’s living rooms trying to understand the relationship between housing and health, equipped to look at crowding and mold and lead and asbestos, but totally surprised by the energy stories that came up again and again. That was really the root of conceptualizing energy insecurity was just sitting in homes in Boston and trying to understand what was happening and then realizing that this was happening in many other places where I was carrying out research. Some of the issues, actually some of the topical focus areas of the research were none to do with energy, but it was still coming up because we know that energy is everywhere. And then I wanted to intentionally do this, follow up a national study based in 10 different places around the country, really varied. Montana, Arizona, California, Tennessee, Detroit, Pennsylvania, here in New York City, of course Puerto Rico, and I don’t think that’s 10, but you get the point. It’s far and wide. And just to really track people that were inside of the energy assistance orbit, like seeking assistance and then people that were outside of the energy assistance orbit, so maybe getting help elsewhere or through social networks.

And that was an important strategy because some of our prior research had shown, in fact, the paper that I co-authored with Jennifer Laird, who’s the co-author on “Powerless,” showed that people that energy assistance is a last resort. People aren’t necessarily going to energy assistance first. They usually go there in a moment of crisis oftentimes because you’re facing a utility disconnection. So it isn’t necessarily the first order response, it’s the last order response. And that’s why in many ways what we have as an energy assistance response or safety net in the US is really rooted in people on the brink of or already shut off.

Jason Bordoff: I mean, there’s a variety of assistance programs for important needs. Society has determined are important needs, food stamps obviously and others. Is there something different with energy where people are not using what is available to them and waiting until crisis, is that different than other things where we have social assistance programs?

Diana Hernández: Yeah, well, so, great question, and I think it really has to do with the fact that those other assistance programs are considered to be entitlements. So if you are income eligible, you are entitled to those programs. The way that energy assistance works, that it is a block grant to states, states determine how it’s allocated, but it’s limited and it’s limited both in terms of the geographies, what states have access to bigger pots of funding. All states have some energy assistance, some have more funding, and that depends on heating and cooling degree days. So what’s happening outside that might render necessary to heat or cool the indoor space. And then also the proportion of a state’s population that would be eligible by virtue of where they are on the poverty – in relation to the federal poverty levels. So there’s complexity to it. I think there are other drivers too.

Energy used to be really inexpensive and it is not a priority. So the first order priority in terms of a household budget is often rent or a mortgage, then food and then energy may be tertiary. So that’s part of why it also doesn’t get as much policy attention from the poverty world is that it just doesn’t rise up to the same level as healthcare costs or education or whatever. It’s like in the universe of basic needs. It seems like it’s the throwaway and usually for people that are able to meet their energy needs, it is a throwaway, but for people that are unable to, for whatever reason, it’s everything. I think this book really kind of shows the human toll.

Jason Bordoff: So talk about the book. It is for people who are low income, of course it is much more difficult to afford things many of us take for granted, food, healthcare, energy, and we probably don’t talk about that enough, but we know that is true. So what’s the contribution you’re making with this book beyond drawing attention to the issue?

Diana Hernández: So “Powerless” really just, I like to say that it tells a story of energy insecurity in the US, which by itself is a gift. And I say that because I was saying that I’m a trained sociologist and have been a researcher in public health for a very long time, and there really isn’t a book that lays this out in such a comprehensive way. And it was kind of a necessary story to tell because we can’t solve for problems like energy burden if we still don’t have a good handle on the why. So this book is really an answer to why should people care and how does it impact people on a day-to-day basis? And not just the neediest of needy, but also people that are just working, they’re on fixed incomes. They may have had a shock, they might’ve lost their job, and then all of a sudden they’re thrust into this hardship that is not that difficult to get into. But really challenging I think for some households to get out of. And I think this book really lays out how all of that unfolds using a narrative based approach that’s coupled with statistics from two different national studies. So not just showing that it’s consequential, but also that it’s pretty common.

Jason Bordoff: And that I think is what’s such a great contribution and makes it such a great book. And some academics, not all are able to do this the way you can. It’s both the narrative, the stories that really do put this in personal terms and help you understand how this affects people. But also it’s analytically rigorous. I mean, it’s research. You’re a faculty member here for a reason. It’s research and really, so for people listening, tell them what the findings of that research is, how we’re talking about what the problem is, how widespread a problem is this?

Diana Hernández: So on super conservative terms, right? Conditioned on affordability, you have a demonstrated need. You’ve either fallen behind on your utility bills or you report having difficulty paying your utility bills. We estimate that 10 to 13% of the US population experiences, actively, energy insecurity. And so that means that they have an economic demonstration of need, a physical and/or coping kind of combination of two or more indicators, but premised on having an economic need. But we also show that 40%, an additional 40% of the US population has a non-economic experience around energy insecurity. And that could be as simple as you live in an old home and you have single pane windows that are drafty. And no matter what you do, that draft is coming in and maybe you even live in an exclusive neighborhood that has, I

Jason Bordoff: Mean, half the buildings in New York leave their windows open in the winter because the radiators too, so they’re wasting energy. But for many people, I shouldn’t say most, but for many people that’s not an economic strain. So I just want to be clear between the 10 and 13% and the 40%, how you distinguish those two things

Diana Hernández: Because

Jason Bordoff: Those are both big numbers.

Diana Hernández: I mean, it means that one in two people in the US experience some aspect, an energy insecurity. We have only half of the population that is energy secure, meaning that,

Jason Bordoff: But sorry, just to be clear about what that 40% means. It means someone is drafty windows, whatever, and that imposes economic burden or that, what’s that

Diana Hernández: 40%? It’s the next experiential burden. I mean, it’s the same kind of discomfort that one feels in a room that’s too hot or cold. And when you don’t have control over the thermostat or in the building that we’re in right now, this is set by a date when they start to kick in the air conditioning unit.

Jason Bordoff: Is that why it’s so hot in here? I don’t even know why it’s so hot in here.

Diana Hernández: Well, yeah, no, oftentimes it has to do, right? These are mechanical issues. This is not necessarily about, I mean, I think Columbia can pay their utility bills for now, so that’s not really,

Jason Bordoff: Things have changed in the last two months – morbid humor, sorry.

Diana Hernández: But this is right. This is more of the, that’s why the physical piece is so important. That’s kind of why we distinguish between people that are experiencing the economic iteration of energy insecurity from people that have these other symptoms or it’s all part of a syndrome, a social syndrome. That’s what we call energy insecurity in the book.

Jason Bordoff: I sort of read the book as saying 40% of Americans may not meet your conservative definition of energy insecure, meaning they are currently foregoing basic needs, having utility shut off, but they’re like a step away from that.

Diana Hernández: That’s right. Or that you could be a high income person that lives in a building where the heat is controlled by someone else and they might be warming your apartment excessively. And for three or more days of the year, you’re experiencing excessive heat. And part of the reason why we use the more conservative number of 10% is that for us, the energy insecurity aspect is really rooted in not having the financial means to make the circumstances better. But you could still have these different expressions of energy insecurity, and in that case it’s really relatable, but you might be three paychecks away from a financial hardship. So you’re kind of at risk because we condition it on having two or more of the indicators at once. So these are people that already have one, and then they might be at risk of an economic circumstance that might render them, really put them in that 10% pool.

Jason Bordoff: And just to make sure our listeners understand, the 10 to 13% explain just again, that’s defined by

Diana Hernández: So yeah, prevalence rates, that’s usually in public health. You want to measure what proportion of a population is impacted by a particular disease state or diabetes, which is also 10% of the population in the US is impacted by diabetes and cancer. And in that sense, then you really do start to see the distinguishing factors around how much attention is given to conditions like diabetes and/or cancer, and not necessarily something like energy insecurity.

Jason Bordoff: And the actual utility shutoffs. What percentage of Americans are experiencing that?

Diana Hernández: So about 3% of the US population experiences disconnections and disconnections are the crisis point of energy insecurity. So it’s like what we call the tip of the iceberg. If you only focused on disconnections, you would only get the very worst cases, but you wouldn’t actually get all of the other indicators and escalations of risk that happen when people are experiencing difficulty paying, they’re missing or paying late, they’re only paying a portion of their utility bills, they’re accumulating debt, a lot of that debt that then becomes very difficult to get out of, especially for households that are on the financial margins.

Jason Bordoff: First, say a little more about how you came to this work because you grew up here in the Bronx, not far from where we’re sitting right now. And just talk a little bit about your personal story and why you’re passionate about this work.

Diana Hernández: I mean, this is not “me-search,” but there are ways in which growing up, I grew up in section eight housing. I grew up in a working class family. My surroundings were very much where there was just concentrated poverty because the US very much is segregated based on race, and my family is Puerto Rican, black Puerto Rican. And so that limited where we could live, right? In many ways, and that’s still true. I mean, we know redline communities still exists. There are still health consequences that are present day based on that. But I think what brings me to the work and where I can be a little more empathetic about it is that, first of all, I’m a nontraditional academic. I started my PhD too when I was 19, and I was sitting in people’s homes in my early twenties doing this dissertation research.

And first of all, the experience felt familiar. I was going in and out of people’s homes, but the people were people that I grew up with and I heard them and I heard their stories, and I trusted that they were true even if the academic literature had not yet caught up to the idea that this was happening. I feel like because I grew up under circumstances of need, my work is also informed by not just documenting the need and validating it, though I think that’s super important, but also really thinking about solutions. What do we do with this information, this book, I would not have felt that the book were complete if it didn’t also have an action framework, some sense of solutions that first we have in front of us and are available and need to be enhanced and amplified. But I think the other piece of it is we might just need to be a little bit more inventive. How do we absorb and support and center innovation community-based solutions really getting a little closer to the folks that know what’s going on so that we can also hear and imagine new ways forward. And I think this book really is, it lands there. It lands in this place where it’s like, okay, there’s hope.

Jason Bordoff: Is the problem getting worse or better?

Diana Hernández: Well, I

Jason Bordoff: Think in the data, do you see these numbers are going down or up?

Diana Hernández: There’s two ways that I can answer that. When you have a data-driven approach, you will always have nuance. So the way that I think about that in terms of rising rates and the fact that our utility bills are just more expensive is to me an indication that many more people will actually have energy affordability problems. And it’s not just because the utility bills are going up, but everything because of inflation is going up. Now we have the situation of tariffs. The cost of living is just higher. And so to meet basic needs, you just need more money. And that really is the root of the problem. But the other thing is that the health of our housing stock is also at best staying the same or getting worse. And so if we think about efficiency, installation drafts, all of the physical indicators of energy insecurity that we use over time, those are actually looking worse. And so if we think about the end, then we have issues like extreme heat where years ago you could be in New England and never have to even think about having an air conditioning unit that more and more places is less and less the reality.

Jason Bordoff: Yeah, for sure. And so talk about the set of solutions that exist today. I presume you think they’re probably inadequate, but we have the low income heating assistance program. And what’s, what is the policy, the set of policies today to address this? What does that look like and how adequate is it?

Diana Hernández: Yeah, so the energy safety net in the US is really made up of two programs, and this is at the federal level. This is the low-income Home Energy assistance program, LIHEAP and the Weatherization Assistance Program, WAP. LIHEAP is administered through Health and Human Services, HHS. WAP is administered through the DOE, the Department of Energy. And that distinction is actually important because even though the energy safety net started in the same place, 1970s, the oil crisis, the need to provide heating fuels to homes around the US especially cold weather states, is

Jason Bordoff: Really, which disproportionately use oil for heating and oil tends to be more expensive.

Diana Hernández: Exactly. And that was really the beginnings of it. And at first it started out as a weatherization program, and then in kind of future iterations, it became a bill assistance program, but largely designed around being a heating assistance program. Still 40 plus years later, it remained largely a heating subsidy where the kind of secondary piece of it is around crisis. So this is why people are showing up to the energy assistance offices with a disconnection notice or an active disconnection. And then really down the line is cooling assistance and weatherization, much, much smaller parts of the energy assistance safety net. That is LIHEAP. And then you have weatherization assistance, which is really about improving people’s homes. Weatherizing, that’s usually a grant that’s just shy of about $5,000. So imagine the kind of home improvement projects that you could do with $5,000 where you also have the stipulation of a savings to investment ratio. And this savings to investment ratio means that you can only do the things – like maybe sealing and caulking – that would save enough money to actually justify the investment. So the big ticket items, those windows, we know the windows really matter, or sometimes upgrading the heating and cooling units to some more efficient version. Those are bigger ticket items that of course, exceed that limit and then also

Jason Bordoff: Exceed $5,000,

Diana Hernández: Exceed the 5,000, but they do

Jason Bordoff: Pay for themselves over

Diana Hernández: Time, over time, but that’s not how this kind of savings to investment ratio works. It’s a shorter time horizon. Plus the fact that, and we know this to be true also around heat pumps and other clean energy appliance upgrades, is that it’s much easier for homeowners to take that action than it is for renters to take those actions. So probably not surprisingly than many more renters –

Jason Bordoff: Just for people listening, the renters are not, you’re making a capital investment in the home, and if you’re renting, you’re not necessarily benefiting from the increased value that would provide. Right?

Diana Hernández: Exactly. Well, and then also if you’re a landlord and you don’t pay the utility bills, then you also don’t have as much incentive to incorporate these energy efficiency measures. And so there’s the split incentive problem, and then you also have the kind of decision making constraints and then the justifications around, I’m a renter, why would I actually go get into a program? I mean, there’s so many different administrative barriers to getting linked up so that only 20% of the US population, less than 20% of the US population, actually has access to LIHEAP and 0.2% of the US population. This is eligible households that have access to WAP.

Jason Bordoff: Oh, when you say only 20% has access to LIHEAP, in a sense, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Because it means you don’t want a lot of people to qualify for LIHEAP, right?

Diana Hernández: Oh, eligible, right? Well,

Jason Bordoff: You mean of the

Diana Hernández: Eligible household, so less than 20% of all eligible households.

Jason Bordoff: Oh, I see. Okay.

Diana Hernández: So if you’re eligible, right? If

Jason Bordoff: You’re eligible, you want people to

Diana Hernández: Be able to

Jason Bordoff: Access it.

Diana Hernández: Food stamps or SNAP, which is a supplemental nutritional assistance program, supports 82% of all eligible households. It’s an entitlement program. Meanwhile, LIHEAP, you’re looking at less than 20% of all eligible households.

Jason Bordoff: And the reason 80% of people who technically qualify just to say again, they don’t take advantage of it or,

Diana Hernández: Yeah. Well, I think it’s kind of limited and it’s understood to be a scarce resource. There are so many challenges to actually going to the energy assistance office, showing up with all the paperwork that’s necessary, usually reaching a point of crisis.

Jason Bordoff: But just to be clear, the 20% figure is the percent of eligible households who take advantage of the program would

Diana Hernández: Take advantage, who receive LIHEAP benefits. So a lot of the people that I met then in these energy assistance offices, so there are these networks of community action agencies, and they support households in different ways, including by providing access to energy assistance resources. Oftentimes when they’re showing up, they’re showing up not necessarily preventively. Again, if we use that health analogy, preventive health is the screening is all of the support that you need to maintain health, but then you have acute care, which is the emergency room or a hospital. So basically our energy insecure populations are going to the equivalent of an emergency room. They have an energy emergency that they’re facing oftentimes, and that’s when they’re actually going to seek help. But imagine that we structured our healthcare system in that way, in the way of supporting only people that are coming in with a crisis. We would never have health or longevity.

Jason Bordoff: We don’t do a good enough job with preventive care and we pay more for that treatment. You talked a lot about homes, right? Weatherization and heat and cooling. Your statistics in this book covers transportation, gasoline prices as well.

Diana Hernández: It doesn’t.

Jason Bordoff: Oh, it doesn’t. It’s just homes. No. Okay.

Diana Hernández: It’s just homes. So natural gas, electricity of course, and fuel oil would in some cases as well, but we really focus in on expenses for energy services, not necessarily transportation, although the government would actually think about it more in inclusive terms. Now, water, we do include. And water because it is a utility, not necessarily. We went in asking about difficulty paying water bills, and actually during the pandemic there was a water assistance program, the low income water assistance program that started and ended actually in a really short period of time. It didn’t have a long shelf life.

Jason Bordoff: So if you were policy maker of for the day and you could just make whatever policy you wanted, is the key simplifying these programs so everyone who’s eligible takes advantage of them, or is there a whole policy toolkit we don’t even have that we need to address this issue?

Diana Hernández: Yeah. Well, first of all, I think we need to, I mean, this is what I talk about in the book is reframing how we think about the safety net. So the safety net is really meant to catch people as they’re falling to break their fall. But if we want to actually take a more preventive approach to dealing with energy insecurity, we actually need to be rethinking how we actually provide coverage. And I think of that as being more like an umbrella. An umbrella covers someone, allows them to function, get around, operate, but they have a cover from the elements. And that cover in this book comes in the form of an action framework that stands for something. It’s called the SPARK action framework. The S is for screening surveys and public health surveillance. We actually need data. A lot of the data that we have is very dated, and it’s infrequent.

It’s also not localized. It’s really at the national level at best, at the state level. But what we really need are localized data sources, which is why anchoring public health surveillance actually is very helpful. This assumes that a lot of what we know will stay, but we’ll talk about that later. Then participation in energy, decision-making. Energy decisions are being made in terms of regulated utilities, for instance. It’s really meant to be in the public’s interest. Even municipal utilities, rural electric co-ops, same thing, right? There are really these missed opportunities for engaging energy consumers in all walks of life. And I’m talking about the other day I was presenting with college students and they’re like, I don’t even know where to begin. Well, they were graduate students, so they were actually paying their utility bills in terms of thinking about these issues. So that’s the P participation and energy decision making.

Affordable bills. I really do think we need to decouple all of the clean energy programs, for instance, from the fundamentals of making sure that bills, utility bills are affordable and affordable for households. So one of the big things that we talk about is that there isn’t a rate of variability in the same ways that other goods and services have different rates. So not everybody is living in an apartment that’s $12,000 a month. Some people are able to actually live in apartments that are based on their income and they pay what they can. And I think that we need to be thinking about rates not necessarily so evenly. Everybody pays the same amount per kilowatt hour. Well, that’s really, you have equal rates, but unequal burdens, right? And I think that that’s,

Jason Bordoff: So are you’re saying you would make electricity prices or even gasoline prices, income-based, like somehow different people show up at the pump, and I’m just giving that as an example. I know you were focused on homes and see different prices.

Diana Hernández: Yeah, I think if we really understand the human risks of, I mean in terms of health and survival, we would actually not overburden some households by paying one standardized rate. I think we would absolutely be able to slot people in and if they can afford more, they should pay more. And if that’s not within their means, we still have a societal obligation to ensure that people can meet their energy needs. I believe that strongly.

Jason Bordoff: How do you think about the policy responses – are they energy specific or are they broader issues of economic inequality? So I mean, I guess we’re talking about a theoretical world. You don’t get a first best set of policy solutions, but if you’re lower income, a lot of things are more expensive and a lot of things that are important to many others take for granted are a struggle day to day. The idea that you have the earned income tax credit or a host of other things we should do to reduce levels of inequality and give low income people more resources to work with, and then maybe they want to be a little colder or a little warmer, maybe they prefer to spend it on food. How much of the policy response is about economic policy and how much is about energy policy

Diana Hernández: That goes to the R though. I mean, this is literally about differentiating between a robust energy safety net, which actually would mean dealing with the gaps in LIHEAP and WAP, and then also a robust social safety net so that people had a living wage and they have affordable housing and they’re able to plug into an earned income tax credit. We know that the economic policy actually really does support low income households, and when they have relief from the economic pressures, they can go on to be professors at Ivy League universities. I feel like if I have to think about some of the investments in my own childhood, that was section eight housing, it was headstart, it was free lunch programs. You have to be able to provide those economic supports so that people can rise up to be all of the different things that are within their set. Those are the new imaginaries for their futures, but we have to believe first of all, that they’re deserving. And secondly that we have the social investments that we can see into the future that these are not just about right now investments and quick returns, but that these are also about, there’s real societal benefits. Let me just go through the SPARK framework.

Jason Bordoff: No, sorry.

Diana Hernández: The other pieces that came so many letters, we lost track. No, I know, but we were talking through, this is the umbrella, it’s comprehensive is about knowledge and energy literacy.

Jason Bordoff: That’s the K.

Diana Hernández: And you might appreciate this probably more than anybody because you’re such an important voice in energy thinking about energy policy, all of the different dimensions. But you know that this is kind of – the sliver of people that care about energy and think about it seriously is really small, but it impacts us in so many different ways. And it’s only in its absence that it becomes everything, otherwise it’s something that we just kind of take for granted and move on from. But I do think that there’s a lot of potential in building out energy literacy, and we need to do that well and better across populations. But I think specifically, and actually there’s a lot that poor people can teach us about energy and its consumption. It’s ethical consumption that I think makes it a bi-directional learning opportunity too. And then of course, energy efficiency and clean energy access.

Jason Bordoff: Sorry, when you say ethical consumption, are you talking about waste and inefficiency and is that what you mean?

Diana Hernández: Yeah. One of my first papers on energy justice before it became a very big field was about the ethical consumption of energy and how ethics are really about responsibilities. And responsibilities are also attached oftentimes to privilege. And as a society, we have to be thinking about places where we just use way too much energy. Part of the reason that our energy prices are increasing is because we have to be able, our utility providers are preparing for the worst case scenario, and they need to be able to provide enough energy when the temperatures are really high and everybody’s using their air conditioning units, etc. And I think that there’s so many drivers, but definitely the idea that ethical consumption falls on people that do have the privilege to not waste to be much more diligent and careful and leaving space and opportunity for people that are just trying to get by, make sure that their children are well taken care of, that they could be in their homes and be comfortable. Because right now we have haves or the energy haves and the energy have-nots. And I feel like the ethical consumption is really about checking the people that are the energy halves and waste.

Jason Bordoff: And part of that is about these domestic issues we’re talking about as I think I was just in India with our India program here at the center. And of course, that’s a whole different dimension where everyone there is, every time I come to New York, every light is on in the entire city and the middle of the night at three in the morning, and every time I go anywhere, everyone’s driving massive vehicles that use it. So this is a whole conversation with how the rest of the world views wealthy countries, particularly the United States.

Diana Hernández: No, I mean, I think that’s exactly right. And I think people don’t like to be uncomfortable or restricted in, definitely not in terms of energy use, but I think this book really just shows how restricted the poor operate when it comes to their footprint and energy consumption, and how much of that do we need to be thinking about for other populations that are not making decisions just solely based on affordability and then disconnection reform. And I really strongly believe that we need to revisit the practice of disconnections. What is the goal? We’ve moved a lot away from, or at least tried, let’s say in the realm of criminal justice, to move away from these harsh penalties and punishing issues that really are fundamentally rooted in poverty. And yet as a practice in the energy space, we still allow people to not have access to energy, despite the fact that this is not about grids and availability at a structural level, but it’s really about affordability. At what point do we take stock of this, make moral decisions about who has access to energy and who doesn’t, and under what circumstances should we extend more protections? And I just think that that practice has been increasing. There are more disconnections now. It is a very effective cost recovery strategy. And yet for households that are low income, it is jolting. It’s like,

Jason Bordoff: So, I mean, again, in a market based economy, if you don’t pay for something, eventually you won’t get it anymore. But is your point, whether it’s food or maybe even housing or energy for these basic needs, we just can’t think of it that way. And maybe it’s like public education. There are certain things that have to be a public good. Is that what you’re saying?

Diana Hernández: That’s exactly right. I, and remember that if you are hungry, and many, many, many millions of households are experiencing food insecurity, but there are resources like food pantries and SNAP benefits and other things that really allow people to meet their energy needs, people can get a hot meal somewhere. There are ways that that need can be met in kind in a way that is not true for energy, although one of the,

Jason Bordoff: You have cooling centers on very hot days, but it’s not about your home.

Diana Hernández: Exactly, yes. You have to leave your home, have to find a place. They’re usually not open 24 hours. So that means, and if they were, then that means that you have to sleep over in that cooling center. And again, those are important resources, and it’s not to take away from the importance of those kinds of resources, but it is to say that we just need to be thinking a little bit more robustly about why people might not have access to energy. And that might actually mean that in certain seasons we have more robust coverage, so people are not dying at home because it’s too hot or too cold.

Jason Bordoff: Can I ask you about the energy transition? If we want to move faster to a clean energy economy and install electric heat pumps and electrify and put more renewable energy on the grid, and does all that make this problem better or worse?

Diana Hernández: I think it makes it better. And

Jason Bordoff: Because it’s expensive to have an energy transition.

Diana Hernández: Yeah, no, it is of course. But as we think about public dollars and how we fund it, I think we should start with households that are presenting with energy insecurity and use that as a criteria for thinking about resource allocation and doing some of those upgrades for free. Because actually the payoff, right? Remember we were talking about the savings to investment ratio and weatherization assistance. If we broadened how we capture the investment, and we think about it as households that are relying on different public services as an example, we might actually, our investments could go further if they weren’t in the hospital,

Jason Bordoff: But in terms of the price of electricity,

Diana Hernández: Right?

Jason Bordoff: Coal super cheap. If you don’t think about negative externalities, if you don’t think about emissions and local pollution, and of course we know a lot of that in the environmental justice world related to energy justice like disproportionately falls on some of the communities we’re talking about. But if it means people talk about a carbon tax as a policy to reduce gasoline consumption or want people to drive electric vehicles, which might save money over the long run, but it’s more expensive to buy. So there’s a price impact in the transition. How do you think about that impact on the communities you’re talking about?

Diana Hernández: Alright, so I guess let me answer that question and just be a little bit more direct about what I think is the right pathway. So I think the right pathway is that people that can afford it should do more, and they might not necessarily have to have all of the subsidies or the same amount of subsidy, and that most of the subsidies that exist should really be targeted toward the lowest income groups. And in many cases, that actually might include not just some discount, but actually for some segments of the population upgrades that are done for free. And with the understanding that not doing it risks displacement and it risks other kinds of challenges on those households and communities. So I think that there are opportunities, and some of the work that we’ve done outside of the book here in New York City around upgrading appliances like stoves and access to solar.

There’s a lot of interest actually in solar. But if you’re living in a city, the question is how do I do that? And I’m living in a building and I don’t own this building, and even if I did, would I be the one that’s actually directly benefiting from the solar array on the rooftop? So there are really some big questions around the cost and the confusion and the logistics of getting access to solar in urban areas. Community solar subscriptions are a way around that. And though it may mean that the solar array isn’t necessarily on the rooftop, it does mean that there are benefits to the clean energy economy and that those are actually, there could be transfers of kilowatts. So one of the things that we talk about in the book is in-kind energy so that there are transfers. Your household could use a subsidy of 200 kilowatts or whatever, and there’s a pool and that pool provides it.

So kind of expanding energy assistance. But the other piece of it, and I want to raise this as kind of the fundamental issue that connects more directly to your question around stoves. So we asked this representative sample of New York City residents about their interest in moving from gas to electric stoves. Meanwhile, 86% of New York City residents are actually relying on a gas stove. And the vast majority of energy insecure households were very interested in transitioning to cleaner electric induction stoves. But the most privileged New Yorkers higher income white residents were less likely to be interested in giving up their gas stoves. And that to me is part of the tension. Who gets to choose who’s most hopeful about

Jason Bordoff: Why were they more interested? The bills are cheaper. The initial stove would be probably more expensive.

Diana Hernández: So the initial stove, I mean, and who knows if they’re renters, they probably wouldn’t be the ones making those decisions anyway, but there is this kind of hope for what the energy transition will mean in terms of people being able to meet their energy needs. And I think that hope really is around people that are having trouble today, meeting their energy needs, not really, and that their vested hope is more on the basis of the relief that this could offer, not necessarily in environmental terms or for some future, but the relief that is more to temporarily set in the now. And I think that’s kind of an important, we think about, oh, we need to reach scale and that needs to happen fast. And I mean, innovation in some ways is oftentimes rooted in solving problems that people face and that feel more proximal. So one of the challenges around the rollbacks of clean energy investments is that people don’t really see climate as an immediate concern. But people that are experiencing energy insecurity very much see energy issues as a right now issue. And they’re so willing to do more, but they’re facing different kinds of barriers. And I think those are barriers that we can overcome, actually.

Jason Bordoff: Yeah, it’s the very local version of Europe is committed, I think, to an energy transition. But when energy security is really at risk because Russian gas is cut off, that’s when people really jump through hoops and do whatever it takes to find alternative supplies, US natural gas or coal. And they also did more efficiency and renewables. And that very important program for low-income heating assistance has been proposed to be eliminated. Is that right?

Diana Hernández: Yeah. So I like to say that LIHEAP is the backbone of the energy safety net in the US And earlier in April, the skeletal staff that administers all of LIHEAP for all of the states was let go. And then days later in the proposed budget, the Trump administration basically said that LIHEAP was redundant and ineffective and that it was a pass-through to utilities. It supported certain states like New York and California that are investing in clean energy and thereby increasing, arbitrarily, rates. And that’s what’s really concerning for, that’s the root of energy affordability problems, and that this was no longer necessary. And I actually think that that’s a really big problem because it is the primary way that the very, very, very needy that are basically using this as kind of to overcome crisis. Where will they turn?

Jason Bordoff: We’re just about out of time, but you co-lead something here called the Energy Opportunity Lab and your broader research agenda, which this book is a part, has helped shape that. Just talk a little bit about what that is and the work you’re doing more broadly even beyond this book.

Diana Hernández: So the Energy Opportunity Lab, and I’m so grateful to you, Jason, for trusting me to co-direct the lab and also to manage the domestic program itself is really rooted in energy access and affordability, both globally with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and in the US. And the whole point is, well first to elevate these issues and to give them the visibility that’s necessary. And that could only really happen in such a well-established energy center that has broad reach and where we could actually say, this is an issue. Listen to us. Not only are we experts in coming in with the data, but also with the credibility of being affiliated with the center and then thinking about it as research translation. That’s what I think of the Energy Opportunity Lab is really about saying the evidence base is really clear, so what do we do about it?

And we have goals around modernizing energy assistance. I mean, we walked in with that goal. Now we think about preserving it, but also maybe thinking about ways in which states and cities and utilities can start to amplify the issue of solutions for energy affordability. Thinking about rates as another place where we are now working on ways of thinking, re-imagining the ways that rates are structured so that they more support energy affordability. We have partnerships with government agencies, with utilities, with other groups, really to think about, well, what are the action steps that can be taken to support solving these problems, which in the US really show up as energy insecurity? At least my work really kind of suggests that. But in the energy transition, in light of what’s going on in terms of climate change, these opportunities to think about a more micro level, not only understanding of the issues, but also thinking about solution sets that are across the board, but also include issues that are a little bit closer to the ground.

Jason Bordoff: Well, you were kind to say thanks to us, but thanks to you for your leadership of that program and just your life’s work and for being such an important part of the senior research team here at the Center on Global Energy Policy and for this fantastic book and for talking with us about it. So Diana Hernandez, thank you so much.

Diana Hernández: Thank you so much, Jason.

Jason Bordoff: Thank you again, Diana Hernandez, and thanks to all of you for listening to this week’s episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. The show is hosted by me, Jason Bordoff and by Bill Loveless. The show is produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor from Latitude Studios. Additional support from Caroline Pitman and Kyu Lee. Sean Marquand engineered the show. For more information about the podcast or the Center on Global Energy policy, please visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media @ColumbiaUEnergy. And please, if you feel inclined, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, it really helps us out. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.

We often associate energy poverty with developing nations, but the reality is that tens of millions of Americans struggle to pay their monthly energy bills. Oftentimes, they forgo heating or cooling their homes in order to pay rent or buy food. And ultimately, they risk losing access to energy altogether, through utility shutoffs.

For families living in inadequate housing with poor insulation and inefficient appliances, energy insecurity impacts health, comfort, and quality of life. For some, government assistance programs are a lifeline. Yet, despite rising energy rates, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is in danger of losing funding.

So what policy solutions could address the systemic causes of energy insecurity? How can government assistance be reframed to better support and empower energy insecure households? And will the transition to clean energy alleviate or worsen energy insecurity?

This week, Jason Bordoff speaks with Diana Hernández about her recent book that seeks to answer those questions and proposes a framework for energy equity.
Diana is an associate professor at Columbia University and co-directs the Energy Opportunity Lab at the Center on Global Energy Policy. Her book, “Powerless: The People’s Struggle for Energy,” which she co-authored with Jennifer Laird, an assistant professor at Lehman College, was released in April.

Morningside Campus Status Updates

By Topics

By Regions

By Type

Initiatives

Programs

Partnerships

About

MIssion

People

By Topics

By Regions

By Type

Initiatives

Programs

Partnerships

Guest

Transcript

More Episodes

Relevant Publications

Sign Up Today

Subscribe now

Relevant
Publications