Summer Disconnections Make the Living Less Easy

RMI’s latest report provides policy options to reduce the risks and impacts of electricity shutoffs.

Each year, an estimated three to six million households across the country get their electricity and/or gas shut off due to their inability to pay their monthly utility bill. These utility disconnections deeply destabilize the health, finances, and safety of affected households, and can even be deadly as households lose access to electricity that they need for life-sustaining services.

In the summer months, this deadly threat looms large as millions of households across the country see increased energy bills due to their cooling needs during periods of extreme heat. And as these periods of extreme heat increase in frequency and duration, it is more critical than ever to understand the measures that can be taken to protect households from the deadly threat of disconnections. RMI is tackling this challenge with its recently published Disconnections Handbook, which presents regulators with policy options to protect people from utility disconnections.

Dangers of disconnections

As we face one of the hottest years on record, it’s critical to understand how extreme heat harms households across the United States. Utilities disconnect power far more frequently in the summer than other times of year, leaving households vulnerable to the deadliest form of extreme weather (Exhibit 1). Heat waves increase mortality rates by 3.75 percent, and most heat-related deaths occur indoors. In one tragic instance, Stephanie Pullman, a Phoenix resident, died in July 2024 from experiencing a utility disconnection during a heatwave. At the time of her disconnection, she owed her local utility $51. Her story is not unique.

The impacts of a utility disconnection are deeply destabilizing even when it isn’t summer. For example, a disconnection can be life threatening for people that use medical devices that require electricity or use medications that require refrigeration. Families are also susceptible to displacement and separation as a result of a disconnection, as they have the potential to contribute to eviction or foreclosure. And homes without electricity may not be able to maintain the household or foods at a safe temperature, which can be considered a dangerous environment for children, leading to an intervention by child protective services that could take custody of children away from their parents.

The scale of disconnections

As seen in Exhibit 1, disconnection rates in both summer and winter have generally declined over the past decade. This can be attributed to more states adopting extreme weather protections for both cold and hot seasons. Still, a significant gap remains in summer protections: in 2022, there were nearly double the disconnections in summer (~906,000) than in winter (~467,000). This disparity likely reflects the fact that while 42 states have protections against disconnections during extreme cold, only 25 extend similar safeguards during periods of extreme heat. Expanding extreme heat protections could therefore play an important role in reducing risks as climate impacts intensify.

Exhibit 1

A range of factors, such as geographic region, housing ownership type, income level, and racial and ethnic background factor into the scale and severity of disconnections seen across different corners of the country. Historically marginalized groups experience higher rates of disconnections than other groups, even when controlling across similar income levels in the same geographic location.

Regulatory solutions

Disconnections are a policy choice; proven regulatory solutions exist to address them. These include targeted protections for vulnerable groups or during extreme weather, broad reforms that eliminate disconnections as a collection tool altogether, and affordability programs that reduce bills to prevent shutoffs in the first place.

Protecting against heat

As extreme heat becomes more frequent and severe, state policymakers have a major opportunity to strengthen lifesaving protections. Exhibit 2 illustrates the types of extreme weather protections adopted across states, such as date-based moratoria during summer and winter months and rules that prohibit shutoffs once temperatures reach certain thresholds.

Exhibit 2

Virginia and New York provide two recent examples of extreme heat protections.

Virginia legislates a solution — In 2024, the Virginia legislature established that utility customers cannot be disconnected when extreme cold (below 32 degrees) or extreme heat (above 92 degrees) events are forecasted within the 24 hours following a scheduled disconnection.

New York Commission protects against heat — In 2025, the New York Public Service Commission initiated a rulemaking on its own motion to adopt disconnection protections during extreme heat conditions, saying, “The utilities’ obligation to provide safe and adequate service is most important during periods of extreme heat, when access to air conditioning and water are increasingly important.”

Addressing disconnections and their underlying cause

States have an opportunity to tackle disconnections at the root by addressing energy affordability. Disconnections are often the result of unaffordable energy bills, which stem from a mismatch between household income and energy costs. Without intervention, this can trap households in a cycle of energy poverty: falling behind on bills leads to disconnection, which in turn worsens health, financial stability, and housing security — making it even harder to catch up.

To break this cycle, more states are combining targeted disconnection protections (e.g., extreme heat moratoriums) with affordability programs such as low-income discount rates and arrearage management. This dual approach helps reduce the risk of shutoffs, address customer debt proactively, and contain utility system costs that would otherwise be passed on to all ratepayers as uncollectible expenses.

RMI’s Energy Poverty Policy Simulator (EPPS) can help states develop comprehensive affordability portfolios to ultimately reduce the occurrence of disconnections. By targeting energy affordability — the root cause of most shutoffs — EPPS enables policymakers to assess the costs and benefits of various interventions, including low-income discount rates and arrearage relief programs, and design policies that are both impactful and cost-effective. An RMI analysis found that nearly half of costs associated with energy affordability programs that target the highest burdened households would be offset by reducing the number of uncollectible bills from ratepayers.

Public utility commissions interested in disconnection reform can find detailed policy strategies in RMI’s newly published Disconnections Handbook. The Handbook details the current landscape of utility disconnection protections that embed policy design and provides implementation considerations for state policymakers. It is designed to demonstrate the scale of the energy poverty crisis that leads to mass utility disconnections and provide policymakers with a comprehensive overview of disconnection protection reform options.

Download the Disconnections Handbook here.