CHARLOTTE, N.C. — During the heat dome that blanketed much of the Southeast in June, Stacey Freeman used window units to cool her poorly insulated mobile home in Fayetteville, N.C. In the winter, the 44-year-old mom relied on space heaters.
In both cases, her energy bills reached hundreds of dollars a month.
“Sometimes I have to choose, do I pay the light,” Freeman says, “or do I pay all the rent, or do I buy food, or do I not let my son play sports?”
As a regional organizer for PowerUp NC, Freeman helps people properly insulate their homes, particularly in the Sandhills region where she lives and works, where poverty and rising temperatures make residents vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change.
But Freeman's income is too high to profit from the very services she helps others receive through this grassroots sustainability, clean energy, and environmental justice initiative.
Like a growing number of Americans, Freeman struggles with what is known as energy povertyincluding the inability to pay utility bills to heat or cool the home. Households that spend more than 6% Some researchers believe that a large part of their income comes from electricity bills.
Energy poverty can increase a person’s exposure to extreme heat or cold, which increases the risk of respiratory illnesses, heart problems, allergies, kidney disease, and other health conditions. And the burden falls disproportionately on households in communities of color, which experience it at 60 percent higher rates 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 spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Extreme heat is the No. 1 cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S., with the risk rising as temperatures rise. Last year, 2,302 people in the U.S. died from heat-related causeswhich is 44% more than in 2021. In one week in early July this year, extreme heat claimed the lives of at least 28 people, according to The Washington Postbased on reports from government officials, forensic experts and local news reports.
However, according to RMI, an energy and sustainability think tank, 1 in 7 households spends about 14% of their income on energy. Nationally 16% of households are in a state of energy poverty, according to an analysis co-authored by Noah Kittner, an associate professor of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Old, inefficient buildings and heating systems force people to supplement their energy needs in ways that drive up costs,” Kittner said.
Pregnant women, people with heart or lung disease, young children, older adults, and people who work or exercise outdoors are most at risk for heat-related health problems. High temperatures have also been linked to 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 neighboring areas with more vegetation and less development, said La’Meshia Whittington, an environmental justice and clean energy advocate. Interstate 440 runs through Method, and the city stores shuttle buses there, often with their engines running.
“It creates a lot of pollution that heats up the area,” Whittington said. “There's no ground to absorb the heat. Instead, it bounces off the tiles, the roofs, the sidewalks, and creates a furnace.”
According to her, residents of Method often complain of chronic headaches and breathing problems.
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 facilities and cooling centers. Poor housing and higher poverty rates contribute to high rates of heat-related illness.
“Energy poverty is the accumulation of burdens without the ability to individually address those burdens,” said Ashley Ward, director of the Center for Heat Policy Innovation at Duke University.
In many parts of the country, extreme heat is a relatively new problem. Policymakers have historically focused on the threats from colder temperatures.
The federal government's energy assistance program for low-income families, created more than four decades ago, has a funding formula that favors cold weather states over those experiencing 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.
During the summer, North Carolina relies largely on private donors and local nonprofits like PowerUp to distribute fans and air conditioners, but the state does not contribute to energy bills.
On particularly hot days, Freeman and her colleagues at PowerUp NC work with state health officials to direct vulnerable people to cooling centers.
On a personal level, to stay cool this summer, she had to send her son to a free outdoor recreation center rather than pay for him to join a sports league.
“We're doing something that doesn't cost anything,” she said. “We're just trying to pay the electric bill.”
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