Energy affordability is a top concern for households across the United States, with a recent survey finding that over one-third of households reduced or went without basic necessities like food or medicine to pay an energy bill during the last year. The costs of electricity, heating fuels, and transportation fuels — along with the volatile and unpredictable nature of many of these costs — are straining budgets, especially for low- and moderate-income households that already spend a disproportionate share of their income on energy.

Fortunately, a variety of solutions can improve energy affordability. This hub brings together resources from RMI and other organizations that can help decision-makers understand the drivers of the affordability challenge and the tools available to address it across the electricity, buildings, and transportation sectors.

For the average American household, a little over half of energy expenditures go to gasoline, about a third to electricity, and the remainder to home heating fuels. Energy costs within those categories are shaped by multiple factors, including utility investments, fuel price volatility, inflation, housing and transportation patterns that lock in energy use, and the availability of cost-saving incentives and financing options. Understanding these drivers helps identify where interventions can be most effective.

RMI’s Affordability Hub can be filtered by characteristics like sector, solution, and decision-maker to help users quickly find insights relevant to them.

A framework for solutions

Addressing residential energy affordability requires a portfolio of solutions that promote cost control, cost distribution, and customer agency:

• Cost control: Avoiding unnecessary system cost growth through cost savings and cost efficiencies
• Cost distribution: Allocating costs appropriately across the system and seeking alternative sources to pay for those costs
• Customer agency: Providing households with choice, control, access, and predictability to manage their energy costs

Across these three solution sets, safeguards protect low- to moderate-income households from undue energy burden.

The hub allows users to develop effective strategies by organizing resources according to this solution framework.

All Affordability Resources