Charlotte, North Carolina — During the heat wave that blanketed much of the Southeast in June, Stacey Freeman relied on window air conditioners to cool her poorly insulated mobile home in Fayetteville, North Carolina. During the winter, the 44-year-old mother relied on space heaters.
In both cases, his energy bills were running into the hundreds of dollars a month.
“Sometimes I have to choose between paying the electric bill, or paying all the rent, or buying food, or not letting my son play sports,” Freeman said.
As a regional field organizer for PowerUp NC, Freeman’s job is to help people properly weatherize their homes, especially in the Sandhills area, where she lives and works and where poverty and rising temperatures leave residents vulnerable to harsh weather. Health impacts of climate change.
But Freeman’s income is too high to benefit from the very services she helps others obtain through this local sustainability, clean energy and environmental justice initiative.
Like a growing number of Americans, Freeman struggles with what’s known as energy poverty, including the inability to pay for utilities to heat or cool a home. Households that spend more than 6% of their income on energy bills are in a situation of energy insecurity, some researchers suggest.
Andrew Craft for KFF Health News
Energy poverty can increase exposure to extreme temperatures, which increases the risk of developing respiratory, heart, allergy, kidney, and other health problems. This burden falls disproportionately on households in communities of color, who suffer from it at a rate 60% higher than those in white communities.
Public health and environmental experts say that as climate change continues to create extreme weather, more policy efforts are needed to help vulnerable communities, especially during heat waves.
“Energy poverty is just one example of how climate change can exacerbate existing inequities in our communities,” said Summer Tonizzo, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Extreme heat Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, a risk that increases as temperatures rise. Last year, 2,302 people in the United States died from heat-related causes, a 44% increase from 2021. In one week in early July this year, extreme heat killed at least 28 people, according to The Washington Post, which relied on reports from state officials, medical examiners and local news reports.
Yet, according to RMI, an energy and sustainability think tank, one in seven households spends about 14% of their income on energy. Nationally, 16% of households are in energy poverty, concludes an analysis co-authored by Noah Kittner, an assistant professor of public health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
“Old, inefficient buildings and heating systems are forcing people to supplement their energy needs in ways that increase costs,” Kittner said.
Pregnant women, people with heart or lung problems, young children, the elderly and people who work or exercising outdoors are most at risk heat related health problemsHigh temperatures are also correlated with mental health problems such as suicide and severe depression.
Location is another risk factor. For example, in a historically black community in Raleigh known as Method, temperatures can be 10 to 20 degrees warmer than in neighboring areas where there is more vegetation and less development, said La’Meshia Whittington, an environmental justice and clean energy advocate. Interstate 440 runs through Method, and the town’s stores commute along it, often with their engines running.
“This creates a lot of pollution which warms up the neighborhood“, Whittington said. “There’s no ground to absorb the heat. Instead, it bounces off shingles, roofs, sidewalks and creates a stove.”
Method residents frequently complain of chronic headaches and breathing problems, she said.
Although rural areas tend to have cooler temperatures than nearby urban areas because they have less asphalt and more trees, they often lack resources, such as health care facilities and cooling centers. Poor housing and higher poverty rates contribute to high rates of heat related illness.
“Energy poverty is a layering of burdens with no means, at the individual level, to combat those burdens,” said Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University.
In many parts of the country, extreme heat is a relatively new concern. Policymakers have traditionally focused on threats from colder temperatures.
The federal government’s low-income assistance program, established more than four decades ago, has a funding formula that favors states with cold weather over those with extreme heat, according to a Georgetown University study. Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Nevada have the lowest proportional allocations of federal funding, while North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska have the highest allocations.
North Carolina relies heavily on private donors and local nonprofits, such as PowerUp, to distribute fans and air conditioners in the summer, but the state does not contribute to the cost of energy bills.
On extremely hot days, Freeman and his colleagues at PowerUp NC work with state health officials to direct vulnerable people to cooling centers.
On a personal level, staying cool this summer meant sending his son to a free, open recreation center, rather than paying for him to join a sports league.
“We’re doing things that don’t cost anything,” she said. “We’re just trying to pay our electric bill.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the main operational programs of KFF — the independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism.
