- Melody Birmingham
Energy plays an extensive role in helping people conduct their daily lives in a stable and healthful way—by heating and cooling their homes, illuminating their rooms, cooking their meals, and powering a range of necessary appliances.
As a member of the energy industry, NiSource is focused on keeping everyone safe and warm in their homes, including supporting and advocating for our most vulnerable customers across our communities.
While most people can often take that energy for granted, it is an unfortunate reality that millions of Americans cannot afford many of their household necessities, such as quality food, medicines, and even the energy that is so critical to our daily activities.
This is partly because energy costs the same at the individual level regardless of one’s income – meaning energy consumes a larger percentage of a low-income household’s total expenditures. In fact, the average limited-income household’s energy burden is three times that of other households.
But people need energy regardless of cost, and those least able to afford it often sacrifice expenditures for other critical needs to keep energy flowing into their homes.
According to the National Energy & Utility Affordability Coalition (NEUAC)—a nonprofit group dedicated to heightening awareness of the energy needs of income-constrained energy consumers—among families with annual incomes of less than $35,000, more than half reported that they reduced or went without medicine or food at least once in the prior 12 months to pay an energy bill. And over the past year, one in six people report having been unable to pay the full amount of their energy bill.
The health risks of going without energy—or drastically reducing its use—are especially heightened during the extreme weather events.
Fortunately, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), a critical program funded each year by Congress, targets and addresses the needs of many of these limited-income families and individuals, the majority of whom get by on less than $20,000 per year.
LIHEAP provides energy providers like many of NiSource’s Columbia Gas and NIPSCO companies with the means to work together with state governments to use annually appropriated funds to assist eligible households with heating and cooling energy costs, bill payment assistance, energy crisis assistance, weatherization and energy-related home repairs—thereby enhancing energy equity and affordability among low-income households.
Keeping customers connected is goal number one and any disruption in service is a last-resort option. In most cases, NiSource’s local operating companies work with customers and coordinate with local agencies to access available assistance. Programs like LIHEAP are core to that effort, along with company-funded and matching donations programs such as reduced deposits, budget billing, extended payment arrangements, and moratoriums that prevent disconnections in service during the winter months for income-eligible customers.
More than 90 percent of the more than five million LIHEAP recipient households include one or more vulnerable individuals such as seniors, young children and disabled persons. During 2022, the program restored service or prevented disconnection for the program’s beneficiaries nearly 3.3 million times—stabilizing households, protecting families’ health in the face of extreme cold or heat, and preventing low-income energy consumers from having to choose between buying food and paying an energy bill.
At the current level of funding, however, LIHEAP can only serve an average of one in six eligible households—a number that drops to as few as one in 25 in some states.
That’s why NiSource is joining other utilities, organizations and individuals in calling on Congress to provide adequate funding to protect access to energy and fuel for families struggling with kitchen table budgets that are increasingly difficult to balance.
NiSource, meanwhile, is constantly focused on finding ways to do things safer, more efficiently, and with less cost – while also working to source the lowest cost of energy for its customers and prioritizing the most important investments in maintaining a reliable and sustainable system. Energy is a key part of our nation’s economic foundation, one that must provide equal benefit to Americans at every economic and social level. That’s why we are encouraging others to join us in calling on Congress to preserve and strengthen the role of LIHEAP in the next federal budget and, in doing so, protect the health and safety of all our fellow Americans who depend on this program.
- The author is the executive vice president, NiSource and group president, NiSource Utilities