Podcast: Solutions Sidebar – Bringing Energy Insecurity to Light with researcher Diana Hernández

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 like Diana Hernández are trying to bring energy insecurity to light and help those in need.  

Interview guest: Co-author of Powerless and Columbia University researcher Dr. Diana Hernández is 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.  

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Transcript

Ann Thompson:

Energy insecurity is the inability to adequately meet household energy needs and it's an increasing problem as natural gas and electric rates continue to outpace inflation.

Diana Hernández:

Today's disconnection is tomorrow's eviction.

Ann Thompson:

Data from 2024 finds nearly one third of households experience some type of energy insecurity. In the book Powerless, authors Diana Hernandez and Jennifer Lair detail the symptoms and offer a prescription to help those in need.

Diana Hernández:

Relieving folks of the administrative burdens of applications is important, but also strengthening the pathways to beneficial electrification, weatherization, energy efficiency, making it more possible, especially for renters in multiple unit housing to access things like community solar.

Ann Thompson:

In this solutions sidebar, we talked to Hernández, founding principal investigator of Columbia University's Energy Equity, Housing and Health Program. She's also the co-director of the Energy Opportunity Lab at the Center on Global Energy Policy. My colleagues, Hernz Laguerre Jr. And Emiko Moore join me at the end for some takeaways. Let's get into it. This is Brick by Brick, solutions for a thriving community.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to leading support from Greater Cincinnati Foundation, AES Foundation and George and Margaret McLane Foundation, with additional major support from Laurie    Johnston, The Robert & Adelle Schiff Family Foundation, Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation and more. Thank you

Ann Thompson:

Author of the book, Powerless and Columbia University researcher, Diana Hernandez, welcome to Brick by Brick.

Diana Hernández:

So happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Ann Thompson:

As you know, energy insecurity has many causes and one of them is physical where you might have a family living someplace where there's gaps between the walls and their heating bills might be higher because of that. And you know firsthand because you grew up in Section 8 housing where that might've been the case.

Diana Hernández:

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me again. And it's true that people who live in homes that are inefficient either by virtue of lacking adequate insulation or because they have single pane windows or there are cracks and holes in the walls, floors or ceilings are much more likely to be energy insecure. This is really its physical manifestation and has to do with inefficiencies and deficiencies in the home that both generate higher costs because it's just more expensive to operate an inefficient home, but it also makes it much more difficult to achieve comfort. And I've learned this firsthand by speaking to people, literally interviewing them in their homes and seeing firsthand a trailer in Alabama, for instance, that had a hole in the floor, the size of a soccer ball. And that's not the only example. Other examples in places like Detroit where there's inherited property and the one person that I was interviewing basically inherited a home in disrepair.

And I myself, of course, grew up in subsidized housing and we know that renters are more likely to experience energy and security in part because there is this kind of split incentive problem where landlords that don't pay the utility costs themselves are less incentivized essentially to make their rental properties more efficient.

Ann Thompson:

And they probably have to get creative if they're having trouble paying their bills, like your mom putting water and heating it up on the stove and some people might have to do things that could be kind of dangerous like turning on a space heater and leaving it on all night, which they shouldn't have to do, but they think that they have to keep warm.

Diana Hernández:

They do it behind closed doors. So in many ways we don't necessarily understand the extent of these coping strategies, but to be poor oftentimes is to make do with limited resources and really with ingenuity. But I think that this is also part of the problem and part of the reason why this problem of energy insecurity hasn't elevated to a place where more people recognize it in part because it does happen within the privacy of people's homes.

Ann Thompson:

And speaking of coping strategies in your book, Powerless, you talk about to compound the problem, the energy insecure cope by using money for medicine, food, and other things to pay their electricity and gas bills the heat or eat dilemma. Explain that if you will.

Diana Hernández:

That's right. That's basically about the trade-offs that people are making between paying for their utility bills and meeting other basic necessities like food, medicine, transportation and even clothing. There was a woman that I met in Tennessee who basically described her son really needing new sneakers. The sneakers had holes in them and she looked at both the utility bill and her son's sneakers and decided to prioritize the utility bill. But what we're really talking about are people that are making decisions that are the hard choices associated with poverty that often also feel kind of like they assault one's dignity.

Ann Thompson:

That was a really heartbreaking story that I remember from your book. How many people suffer would you say from energy insecurity in the US?

Diana Hernández:

Well, so in our book, we report on 2020 data and we use kind of a more stringent way of measuring energy insecurity. And it's basically one in 10 US households are experiencing a financial challenge associated with energy insecurity and some other form either by coping or the physical elements of energy insecurity. This is a very conservative way of estimating this, but we also show that 40% of households are at risk because they're either coping to prevent as in under-consuming energy and/or making those trade-offs or experiencing power outages and other kind of physical manifestations of energy insecurity. Just recently, the residential energy consumption survey data from 2024 was released and it shows that about 43 million households in the United States have some form of energy insecurity.

Ann Thompson:

Paint us a picture, if you will, who or which types of people fit into this category and are black and Latino households affected more?

Diana Hernández:

Yeah. So low income households are disproportionately impacted by energy insecurity as are 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. So really a profile of marginalized groups. But what's really interesting again in updating the data is that you have now a wider net that's been cast. So more people are experiencing energy insecurity and more of them newly initiated. So more white households, more middle income households, more seniors and working aged groups are experiencing energy insecurity than now, or at least based on 2024 data and with the energy landscape changing as it is both with data centers and then also new wars that are basically sustaining old energy regimes. This is also creating more volatility on the global scale, but it's also really translating into more volatility at home.

Ann Thompson:

The problem of energy insecurity, is it overlooked by policymakers?

Diana Hernández:

I mean, I would say so. We do have a way of both characterizing and recognizing housing insecurity and food insecurity, transportation issues. And somehow this question and the issue of energy insecurity, it hides in plain sight. It's there, but people don't see it. But one of the things that I do know about decades of working in this space is that once people understand its contours, they're much more likely to be able to see it again and again, especially if they're working with disproportionately impacted groups.

Ann Thompson:

In 2018, I was reading you launched the Energy, Equity, Housing and Health National Study, A Comprehensive Examination of Energy Insecurity in the US. Why did you do it and how did you do it?

Diana Hernández:

It was necessary because in many ways I had done a lot of qualitative work, but in some ways that really doesn't allow you to measure the prevalence of something in a population as one would do in public health where I am academically situated. And so the survey component, a national survey that was both representative in the sense that it has a weighted sample and then also that the questions are much more comprehensive and sensitive informed by the lived experiences from having done hundreds of in- depth interviews in people's homes was necessary because it basically organized the questions in terms of these components, the economic components, the physical components, and the coping components. And we now know much more about energy insecurity as a result of having conducted that survey and then it's also inspired other work in the field. I

Ann Thompson:

Know that you already told the story of the dilemma with the mother whose son needed new shoes, but she had to pay the energy bill. Are there any other stories that stick out in your mind of the people that you interviewed?

Diana Hernández:

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 and he had this kind of, his name, well, at least his pseudonym in the book is Oscar and he's a person that was basically home bound. I initially connected with him through a nurse who was able to link me up. She's a community, she was based in a church and Oscar was a person that was dealing with a heart condition from very early in his life and he required a CPAP machine for sleeping at night to deal with his sleep apnea as well as an oxygen concentrator during the daytime hours. And it was really just to me so striking that on his sofa, right alongside the oxygen tank, there was a pink slip on the sofa. And when I asked what it was, he explained that it was a disconnection notice and he had made all these plans for like in the context of a power outage, he would go to the sheriff's office and he had kind of this emergency plan in place for if power went out and it was a systemic issue, but he was actually sitting right next to a piece of paper that jeopardized not only his access to electricity, but also access to a life source.

And to me, that's also really a story about how little protection we have for all kinds of groups, but I think especially for the medically vulnerable.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah, so true. And in fact, maybe because of bad situations or having to be in a cold apartment because you can't pay the bill, some of them had health problems related to not having enough heat.

Diana Hernández:

Yeah. There were definitely stories about people not being able to sleep and having GERD that's kind of associated with extreme indoor temperatures and cold in particular, heat stress and people use different kinds of ways of describing this, but one of the things that I think is an interesting takeaway from this book is the idea that 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. It's challenging economically, it's challenging physically and in the high effort coping that people have to activate, but there's also points of depletion and you could see how something like energy insecurity, especially when chronically exposed, just wears people down. And I like to say that there's an analogy between energy insecurity and food insecurity and we have language to describe hunger, for instance, and malnutrition.

And I think this book really also shows just how draining it is to be energy insecure.

Ann Thompson:

I hope you're discovering a lot from our conversation with Diana Hernández. There's more still ahead following this short break. This is Brick by Brick.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to the generous support of so many, including Diane and Dave Moccia, P & G, The Camden Foundation,  The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation, TJ and Susie Ackermann, Patti and Fred Heldman, a donation in memory of Frank and Margaret Linhardt, and more. Thank you. We couldn't do this work without you.

Mark Lammers:

Electricity powers the modern life no matter how it's generated and gets to our neighborhoods. It provides for our personal stability, quality of life, and our productivity. But for one in 10 families in our country, this modern necessity is not a given due to cost. It's an eye-opening fact and one I'm glad Brick by Brick can explore alongside potential solutions. Hi, I'm Mark Lammers, executive producer of Brick by Brick. Can we reach a state of energy equity in America? We can if that's our goal, but it may require systemic changes to our electrical grid, especially as the demands on power suply increase. If energy insecurity and the stress of your power bill are on your mind, we'd love to hear your thoughts. How are you coping with rising rates? How is it impacting your quality of life, your ability to thrive? If you're struggling, just know you're not alone.

You can provide feedback by clicking on the link in the show notes or by dropping us a note via email at brickbybrick@publicmediaconnect.org. That's Brick By Brick at publicmediaconnect.org. Now back to the conversation.

Ann Thompson:

Welcome back to Brick by Brick. I'm Ann Thompson. Let's get back into our conversation with Diana Hernández and Emiko, Hernz and I will be back at the end for some reflections. Your book Powerless says in the last few years, the percentage of households that had a disconnection related to nonpayment ranged from two to 5% locally here it's about 4%. And I know you say that disconnections are extreme and the problem of energy insecurity is much broader, you say. So how so?

Diana Hernández:

Yeah, so disconnections are the crisis point of energy insecurity. It would be like looking at housing problems and only looking at it through the prism of evictions or foreclosures without understanding all of the things that are kind of lying below that that cause those kind of crisis points. So energy insecurity is the same thing. A disconnection is really like a place at which people have kind of lost control in many ways and their preventive coping strategies, their responsive coping strategies have failed and then they're kind of in a bigger conundrum. So they can't turn to a family member for help on the day of a disconnection and get that support or the agencies that they might've turned to where the churches, et cetera, are not available. And so that's why it's such a small number in the population, but when you look at it in terms of its broader characteristics, then you see that those issues are much more widespread.

We know, for instance, that in terms of households that experience both economic and physical aspects of energy insecurity, 69% of them, 70% of them are keeping their homes extremely hot and extremely cold. These are the kind of embodied ways in which people are managing their utility expenses before it gets to the point of a disconnection. But one of the things that I also want to say are about the cascading effects of energy insecurity. So today's disconnection is tomorrow's eviction and it's actually practitioners including homelessness prevention advocates and service providers that really understand that addressing the initial crisis of a disconnection is also preventive of worse outcomes in terms of evictions.

Ann Thompson:

In your research, I don't know if you looked at what areas of country are worse than others for energy and insecurity. I don't know if it's classified that way. I wonder if you did where Ohio and the Midwest rank

Diana Hernández:

Coldweather regions like the Northeast and the Midwest actually historically have been better protected by energy assistance services, for instance. So that the kind of block grant program, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, there are more distributions for supporting heating and that has to do with the fact that the program itself actually emerged from the 1970s oil crisis where it was really about home heating fuels. But where we're seeing energy and security be more of an issue is actually in the South and in the Southwest and warmer, dry, hot states, some of which have kind of less access to energy assistance protection or benefits and less protections against extreme heat.

Ann Thompson:

Chapter 13 in your book, Powerless, delves into some possible solutions. And I know during COVID you saw some positives, moratoriums on shutoffs, utility debt relief and more. What cities or municipalities would you say are figuring it out and what has their response been?

Diana Hernández:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I really believe in local impact and I've been fortunate to work with our New York City Health Department and we have both been working on the data side to really look at local numbers. So what we present in the book is a national picture of this situation broken down in some instances by state but not more local than that. And health departments are really important because they have access to regularly interval data collection cycles. And so we've been working with our local health department 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 insecurity. And one of the solutions is actually to streamline application processes by making eligibility or when people are already enrolled in other means tested programs that there's an automatic enrollment and also using that as a means to automatically enrolling in utility discount programs as well.

So that piece around relieving folks of the administrative burdens of applications is important, but also strengthening the pathways to beneficial electrification, weatherization, energy efficiency, making it more possible, especially for renters and multiple unit housing to access things like community solar. These are all parts of the ways in which we've been working on trying to elevate not just understanding of the problem, but also thinking about local solutions.

Ann Thompson:

We could declare household energy a human right as you suggest. What would that mean and why is that not likely at the moment?

Diana Hernández:

Well, I mean, it would basically mean that we recognize that energy is an enabler of other recognized human rights. You can't have the right to housing and the right to health without energy. Energy is actually the source that makes those established human rights possible. We don't think about it like that, but that's how I like to kind of acknowledge its centrality and the pathways to that actually in some ways are not that complicated. So one is actually disconnection reform and figuring out pathways of making disconnections be really kind of a last resort and finding all kinds of ways to support people long before they reach that crisis point and also figuring out pathways toward energy affordability. One of the things that we know is that energy policy is, it's very complex and it's cumbersome and it's abstract nature, makes it difficult for people to understand even how to get into and participate in energy decision making, but there are also these kind of very outdated ways of thinking about the legal standards that guide energy regulation, including the idea that households, regardless of income, pay the same amount.

And there's a way in which there's not that kind of accommodation around energy affordability based on what people can pay. And that too is something that can be interpreted. This is why I think the law is so important and is a really important lever for thinking about this is because there's the interpretability around the legal standards like just reasonable and non-discriminatory rates.

Ann Thompson:

And maybe that's the answer to this, but what do you see as the path forward?

Diana Hernández:

Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that rate reform and rate redesign are important elements of the path forward, especially in terms of thinking. I mean, every person that I spoke to, honestly, they took pride in being able to pay their utility bill. This was not a matter of wanting to get over. This is not a question of getting over, but people were literally overwhelmed by bills that they could not afford. And to me then that means that we have to reconsider how it is that our utilities are structured so that they can better support households in meeting this basic need.

Ann Thompson:

What gives you hope?

Diana Hernández:

There's so much that gives me hope, but I'll tell you, I mean, as someone who's sitting in New York City, not right now actually, I'm sitting in Massachusetts, but my home state, we started off thinking about Section eight housing and how that was kind of a launching path for my life and doing work in New York City and New York State has been really important to me. And I realize the importance of an enabling environment and New York State and New York City have both really created enabling environments to get some of this right by having an affordability agenda, for instance, by thinking really early on about the importance of an energy transition that is just and serves disadvantaged communities well and that those kind of offer paths forward for also thinking about the ways in which new technologies, new energy technologies can better serve communities.

Ann Thompson:

We always like to ask people what a thriving community looks like to them. So what would you say to that?

Diana Hernández:

I always end my talks on feeling and when I think about a thriving community, I think about a connected community, I think about a community that allows people to live in health, in comfort, in dignity, on that is really based in security and not overwhelmingly focused on resilience.

Ann Thompson:

Diana Hernandez, thanks for being on Brick by Brick.

Diana Hernández:

Thank you so much for having me.

Ann Thompson:

Remember, if you're interested in digging deeper into our conversation with Diana Hernández and want to learn more about Brick by Brick in general, there are plenty of web articles and videos. Go to cetconnect.org and thinktv.org and we'd like to hear from you. Click on one of the big green buttons to share your feedback. Energy and security a problem hiding in plain sight as author Diana Hernandez describes it, it's time for takeaways with multimedia journalists Emiko Moore. 

Emiko Moore:

Hello

Ann Thompson:

And Hernz Laguerre Jr.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Hey, everyone.

Ann Thompson:

Hernz, it's hard to afford your heating bill if your home is not structurally sound.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Yeah, that's very true. We learned that on season two, episode two about solar panels, about residential solar where I'm sitting down with one of the energy experts and he said, "Hey, if you have solar panels but then your home isn't properly insulated, you're wasting money." You know what I mean? Because that energy is leaking out. The heat is leaking out if you're not properly insulated. And then Diana gave an example of the resident who had holes in her floor, I believe it was her ceiling or something like that. It reminded me of season one, episode five, where we covered right to council Alice Wood if you remember her, she was a single mother of four and she had issues with landlords not properly addressing issues in her apartments. And she said how she had golf ball, baseball size holes in her bathtub that not only let air out and let the heat out, but also brought bees in and stuff like that.

It was a disaster. So you can understand how proper installation, proper infrastructure of a home is very important. And the last thing I'll bring up real quick, Diana brought something up that Junia Howell from our property tax episode brought up too, being able to pay something based off your earnings, based off your income. Diana was saying that one of the solutions could be paying your energy bills based off how much you make and Junior Howell said the same thing, calling it earnings equity.

Ann Thompson:

Thanks, Hernz. I like how you're bringing up all the past episodes.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

I got you, got you.

Ann Thompson:

So Emiko, you were moved by Oscar's story.

Emiko Moore:

Yes. I do believe if someone is medically vulnerable and requires electricity or some energy source to survive, then we need to get a new policy right away to assist these people rather than have their energy sources cut off because they can't afford it. Many families we cover have these difficult choices already to make, whether to, as Diana Hernández calls, heat or eat dilemma. And that's also same with choosing between heating or food or medicine or heating. And it really does have its toll on people's health when they're under this constant stress of trying to pay all these bills. And we talked about this in our infant mortality segment when stress increased stress increases the chance for a mother to become a preterm diabetic So all of these are different factors in it and I'm concerned because the energy prices continue to rise and they're rising rapidly.

I just went and got gas yesterday and I cannot believe how sharp an increase in prices that it is. And for other people who have to make their budgets, I mean this is something in your monthly budget, you're really going to have to do a lot of adjustments.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah. And there's a lot of shame involved. People do want to pay their bills as Diana explained. This whole thing, and she called it coping strategies, is something that happens behind closed doors with all kinds of implications. It's a very private matter. You're not able to pay your bill and so you're having to lower the heat or raise the heat and your kids might ask like, "Hey, why is our house so cold?" And then you might experience guilt if they get sick. And this privacy is maybe why this problem hasn't elevated to more of a topic of conversation. But I agree with you, Amico. I think that the whole maybe energy crisis as it gets worse, then people are going to have to reallocate their budgets and maybe then people will be talking more about energy and security. Thanks guys.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

No problem.

Ann Thompson:

Thank you. Coming up on The Next Brit by Brick, the benefits of planting more trees. The president and CEO of the Cincinnati Parks Foundation says lack of trees can contribute to negative outcomes in a community.

Jennifer Hafner Spieser:

The Green Cincinnati Plan is showing and reflecting upon of the 52 neighborhoods, how many of those neighborhoods fall well below 40% canopy coverage. You can equate crime in a community or asthma rates with lack of shade.

Ann Thompson:

How prioritizing green space and planting more trees can help residents thrive. That's on the next Brick by Brick. 

That's our show. If you like what you hear, please rate and review our podcast. It helps make it easier to find. We hope you learned something and if you did, please share it with your friends and family. For Amico Moore and Hernsligare Jr. I'm Anne Thompson. We'll be back soon with more solutions. Take care. 

Our show is produced, hosted an edited by me, Ann Thompson with reporting and story editing from Hernz Laguerre Jr. and Emiko Moore. Our Executive producer of Mark Lammers. Audio sweetening provided by Mike Schwartz. Zach Kramer runs the lights and cameras. Derrick Smith is our production specialist and Jason Garrison is our production manager. Marketing and promotions from Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger. Elyssa Stefenson handles the website and Josh Lusby and Steve Wright are our designers. Bill Dean and Andres Kruza are the engineers for the show and our Chief Content Officer is Colin Scianamblo. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community is a production of CET and ThinkTV, Southwest Ohio PBS member stations.