American households face electricity and heating bills that have spiked beyond their ability to pay, driven by volatile global fossil gas prices, Russia’s war on Ukraine, inflation and ever-rising energy needs fueled by climate catastrophe. Meanwhile, private utilities cushion themselves from this financial blow by raising household energy bills.
As this report shows, profit-driven utilities continue to cut off families’ basic human right to electricity and heat millions of times a year while returning billions of dollars to their shareholders and executives. From 2020 to 2022, utilities in just 30 states and Washington, D.C. shutoff households over 5.7 million times. Last year more than 20% of families couldn’t afford their energy bill. The rate was 50% higher for households of color.
How does Louisiana stack up? Well we don’t know because Louisiana doesn’t require utilities to disclose disconnections data, even during the pandemic! We need transparency, a ban on shutoffs, and renewable & just energy.
