As a year from the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic comes to a close, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is deciding to lift the moratorium on disconnection it had put in place to protect the Commonwealth's residents. This decision comes from pressures exerted by the utilities on...Read more
SNAP directors are urging those in crisis to apply right away whilst asking those who can cope to wait a little longer before applying. The question here is: is it ethical to ask anyone who needs help (regardless of critical or non-critical status) to wait to apply? Shouldn't it be the...Read more
This report was created by Carbon Switch, an energy efficiency investment company, that collected information on household energy bill accumulation and unemployment rates. Predictions made by the firm estimate a whooping 76 million households will be shut off or will be threatened with shutoffs...Read more
The attached paper analyzes the creation of the uneven distribution of electricity throughout Eastern North Carolina, tracing the history of the energy distribution from the introduction of utilities to now. The author dives into the different organizational structures of energy utilities, how...Read more
Echoing the topics of discussions in the headlines, this article talks about the impending end of state moratoria. Citing studies like the American Housing Survey, the article discusses disproportionate impacts felt by low-income communities as COVID-19 has compounded their already-precarious...Read more
This article provides an update on the state of residential utility arrears in New Jersey, where nearly 600,000 customers owe more than $570 million in back payments. Johnson explains that low income workers/households were hit by pandemic costs and losses particularly hard, but that middle...Read more
With Isaias reaping havoc in the Northeast, many would have expected utilities to better respond to the storm that caused thousands of households to be left without power. While Eversource representatives said their response was prompt and relative to the emergency level that had been declared,...Read more
With the onset of the pandemic, many states have put moratoriums in place to avoid families being shutoff in the middle of the crisis. However, even with extensions, many of these moratoriums are set to expire by the end of September, which would leave a little less than 35 million people...Read more
This brief article concisely summarizes available options for people and households in need of bill assistance. Prior to providing information on bill assistance, however, this article goes into an all-familiar step-by-step on how to change our household behaviors to reduce energy expenditure....Read more
This artifact is an analysis of utility use by the city of Aspen Colorado and how they became one of the very few US cities to use solely renewable energy. This is important because it shows a successful example of a city in the US where the infrastructure has seamlessly transitioned to...Read more
This article is another article that talks about governors investigating utilities' poor responses. That said, this article also mentions Connecticut and New York declaring states of emergency in order to speed up assistance to communities most hardly hit by the storm. That said, we should also...Read more