A Data-Driven Look at Utility Disconnections

When a household is disconnected from their electric utility service, the consequences can be severe. Some accumulate debt. Some cannot maintain comfortable temperatures. Some have accidents as they try to unsafely heat or cool themselves. Some become homeless. And in more extreme cases, some die.

These findings come from important research conducted in recent years across the United States—gathering data from surveys of individuals who have experienced utility disconnections.

For the most part, surveys have been the primary method of study—due to a paucity of data from utility providers. Disconnection data is often inconsistent or nonexistent, due in part to the fact that there is currently no national requirement that utility companies disclose this type of information.

In a recent article in Nature Communications, my co-authors and I share a new quantitative study that successfully gathers state utility data using the Utility Disconnection Dashboard. We pull in data from four major utility providers in California: Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas, and municipal provider Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. This gives us a substantial dataset of 26 million electric customers.

Our study confirms earlier findings: that vulnerable demographic groups, namely, Black and Hispanic households and those with young children in the home, face a significantly higher likelihood of being disconnected. We then overlay zip code data to confirm that more Black and Hispanic households are associated with larger overall numbers of disconnections and higher disconnection rates across all four California utilities.

Disconnections also increase when monthly average temperatures are colder. This data point is primarily driven in northern and central California. Among households concentrated in southern California, disconnections are driven by hotter temperatures.

Higher energy costs are also associated with both the level and rate of disconnections in California zip codes. Consistent with expectations, areas with higher energy prices also experience a higher number and rate of disconnections. 

As we move forward with the energy transition, these results make important contributions to our understanding of energy insecurity in the United States. Notably, significant racial disparities in disconnections persist even after controlling for income and energy burden, in the form of energy costs, and poor housing conditions, which has been found previously to drive up the cost of a household’s energy bill.

Our findings provide strong evidence that there is something unique about race and ethnicity that contributes to higher disconnection rates.

Furthermore, as temperatures continue to become more extreme due to climate change, our results suggest that disconnections will increase.

These findings have substantial implications for both scholarship on the impacts of climate change and for policymakers who are seeking policies and programs to effectively mitigate or prevent utility disconnections.

Sanya Carley

Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director

Sanya Carley is the Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center and Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design.