![]() “Tell me how a payment plan is going to be enough for her?” Graham said.Īdditionally, undocumented residents don’t have access to most federally funded programs that require citizenship, leaving a significant part of New York City’s population without access for help.Ĭommunities of color and low-income people are more likely to live in older, less efficient buildings that result in a higher energy burden, or the percentage of the income spent on cost of heating, cooling and powering a home. Graham gave an example of one of the group’s members who is $5,000 in debt, is supplementing her heating with a gas stove, and is pregnant while raising a child under the age of one. “There are already people who are in massive utility debt from the pandemic,” said Jasmine Graham, an energy justice policy manager at We Act for Environmental Justice non-profit. Both have risen across all US census regions. Line chart comparing the regional trends for piped gas and electricity prices. Local and state governments have directed customers who are struggling to pay their utility bills to assistance programs such as Home Energy Assistance Program ( Heap), while energy providers encourage customers to enroll in payment plans.īut environmental justice groups worry that these options are not enough. The state’s utility regulator has sent letters to all of the state’s major electric and gas utilities requiring them to increase their outreach and education efforts with customers. In a statement to the Guardian, a Con Edison representative wrote: “We are reviewing all of our practices that affect customer supply costs, including our energy-buying practices.” ![]() “The extreme utility bill increases all of us are seeing are having a serious impact on our household budgets, and in response we are taking action,” Hochul said in a press release. A utility bill consists of the delivery charge and supply charge for the energy, the latter of which is not set by providers like Con Edison, nor the state and regulatory entities. “We need to build more wind, solar, hydro and tidal power, which are quite honestly expensive to create but are much cheaper in the future,” Berkley said.įollowing the price increases, the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, called on the utility company Con Edison, which services New York City and Westchester county, to review its billing practices. “But now with sustained disruption of the world energy markets, we should expect to see higher prices till the end of the year,” Berkley said, adding that the situation been different if the US wasn’t so reliant on an energy source that that hinges upon the supply chain and the global market. “Almost one in five New Yorkers are staring into potential multi-generational debt,” said Richard Berkley, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project.īefore the war in Ukraine, he would have expected the prices to dip back down as the weather warms up. ![]() Nearly 1.3m households in New York state are at least two months behind on utility bills, accruing a debt of over $1.7bn, according to state filings from 10 major utility companies. Its movement as a petroleum product, follows similar trends as gasoline, which also dipped in the early pandemic before surging. ![]() All energy sources have increased.įuel oil, still a major source of home heating in the north-east but less so in the rest of US, has seen the sharpest increase of 44% compared to the year prior. ![]() Line chart of the change in home energy prices from January 2019 to February 2022. ![]()
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