The U.S. is headed into what forecasters anticipate to be one of many hottest summers on file, and thousands and thousands of individuals throughout the nation will wrestle to pay their energy payments as temperatures and power prices rise.
A 2023 nationwide survey discovered that almost 1 in 4 Individuals have been unable to pay their full power invoice for at the very least one month, and practically 1 in 4 reported that they saved their houses at unsafe temperatures to economize. By 2025, up to date polling indicated practically 3 in 4 Individuals are fearful about rising power prices.
Conservative estimates counsel that utilities shut off energy to over 3 million U.S. households every year as a result of the residents can’t pay their payments.
This downside of excessive power costs isn’t misplaced on the Trump administration.
On the primary day of his second time period in 2025, President Donald Trump declared a nationwide power emergency by government order, saying that “high energy prices … devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed incomes.”
Secretary of Vitality Christopher Wright raised considerations about utility disconnections and outlined a mission to “shrink that number, with the target of zero.”
But, the administration’s 2026 funds proposal zeros out funding for the Low Revenue House Vitality Help Program, or LIHEAP, the federal program that administers funding to assist low-income households pay their utility payments. And on April 1, 2025, the administration laid off your entire workers of the LIHEAP workplace.
Throughout the hottest intervals, even nighttime temperatures won’t drop beneath 90 in Phoenix. With out air con, houses can turn out to be dangerously sizzling.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Many individuals already wrestle to cobble collectively sufficient assist from numerous sources to pay their energy payments. As researchers who research power insecurity, we consider gutting the federal workplace chargeable for administering power invoice help will make it even tougher for Individuals to make ends meet.
The excessive stakes of power affordability
We work with communities in South Carolina and Tennessee the place many residents wrestle to warmth and funky their houses.
We see how excessive power costs pressure individuals to make harmful trade-offs. Low-income households typically discover themselves selecting whether or not to purchase requirements, pay for little one care or pay their utility payments.
One aged individual we spoke with for our analysis, Sarah, defined that she routinely forgoes shopping for drugs with a purpose to pay her utility invoice. One other analysis participant who connects low-income households to power invoice help in Tennessee mentioned: “I’ve gone into these homes, and it’s so hot. Your eyes roll in the back of your head. It’s like you can’t breathe. How do you sit in here? It’s just unreal.”
Sadly, these tales are more and more frequent, particularly in low-income communities and communities of coloration.
Electrical energy costs are predicted to rise with worsening local weather change: Extra frequent warmth waves and excessive climate occasions drive up demand and put stress on the grid. Moreover, rising power demand from knowledge facilities – supercharged by the growing power use by synthetic intelligence – is accelerating value will increase.
Shrinking assets for help
LIHEAP, created in 1981, supplies funding to states as block grants to assist low-income households pay their utility payments. In fiscal yr 2023, this system distributed US$6.1 billion in power help, serving to some 5.9 million households keep away from dropping energy connections.
This system’s small workers performed vital roles in disbursing this cash, offering implementation tips, monitoring state-level fund administration and monitoring and evaluating program effectiveness.
A protracted line of utility clients wait to use for assist from the Low-Revenue Vitality Help Program in Trenton, N.J., in 2011. In 2023, round 6 million households benefited from LIHEAP.
AP Photograph/Mel Evans
LIHEAP has traditionally prioritized heating help in cold-weather states over cooling help in hotter states. Nonetheless, current analysis exhibits a have to revisit the allocation components to deal with the growing want for air con. The layoffs eliminated workers who might direct this work.
It’s unlikely that different sources of funding can fill within the gaps if states don’t obtain LIHEAP funds from the federal authorities. This system’s funding has by no means been excessive sufficient to fulfill the necessity. In 2020, LIHEAP offered help to only 16% of eligible households.
Our analysis has discovered that, in observe, many households depend on a spread of native nonprofits, faith-based organizations and casual networks of household and associates to assist them pay their payments and hold the ability on.
For instance, a analysis participant named Deborah reported that when confronted with a utility shut-off, she “drove from church to church to church” in the hunt for help. United Means in South Carolina obtained over 16,000 calls from individuals searching for assist to pay their utility payments in 2023.
These charitable companies are an vital lifeline for a lot of, particularly within the communities we research within the South. Nonetheless, analysis has proven that faith-based applications shouldn’t have the attain of public applications.
With out LIHEAP, the restricted funds offered by nonprofits and the non-public connections that individuals patch collectively will likely be stretched even thinner, particularly as different charitable companies, equivalent to meals banks, additionally face funding cuts.
What’s forward
The $4.1 billion that Congress allotted to LIHEAP for the 2025 fiscal yr, which ends Sept. 30, has already been disbursed. Going ahead, nonetheless, cuts to LIHEAP workers have an effect on its potential to reply to rising want. Congress now has to resolve if it’ll kill this system’s future funding as properly.
Maricopa County in Arizona, house to Phoenix, illustrates what’s at stake. Annual heat-related deaths have risen 1,000% there previously decade, from 61 to 602. A whole bunch of those deaths occurred indoors.
Cooling turns into important throughout Arizona’s excessive summers. Maricopa County, house to Phoenix, reported greater than 600 heat-related deaths in 2024.
AP Photograph/Ross D. Franklin
We consider gutting LIHEAP places the objective of power affordability for all Individuals – and Individuals’ lives – in jeopardy. Till extra reasonably priced power sources, equivalent to photo voltaic and wind energy, will be scaled up, an enlargement of federal help applications is required, not a contraction.
Growing the attain and funding of LIHEAP is one choice. Making house weatherization applications more practical is one other.
Governments might additionally require utilities to forgive past-due payments and finish utility shut-offs through the hottest and coldest months. About two dozen states at the moment have guidelines to forestall shut-offs through the worst summer season warmth.
For now, the cuts imply extra stress on nonprofits, faith-based organizations and casual networks. Looking forward to one other exceptionally sizzling summer season, we will solely hope that cuts to LIHEAP workers don’t foreshadow a rising but preventable dying toll.
Etienne Toussaint, a legislation professor on the College of South Carolina, and Ann Eisenberg, a legislation professor at West Virginia College, contributed to this text.
