Just because the bill is low doesn’t mean energy is affordable

An energy affordability researcher recounts her grandmother's 1940s farmhouse electrification — one light bulb, a low bill, and years still spent hauling water and inspecting tobacco by oil lamp — as evidence that a small bill has never meant an adequate one. She traces the same gap into the present: a Pennsylvania tenant family with a newborn enduring an 83-degree apartment because they had heat but no air conditioning, and a Pittsburgh woman named Hannah who shut off her heat to save money before a holiday trip, only to return to burst pipes and a flooded, refrozen apartment.

The researcher notes utility companies' efficiency programs focus on reducing energy use rather than lowering its cost, citing one utility's claim that half of home energy use goes to heating and cooling. She argues this framework mistakes a low bill for affordability when it can just as easily signal a family cutting back to the point of harm — heat rash on an infant, frozen pipes, a landlord out tens of thousands in repairs.

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