Coping Under Strain: How Climate, Utility Disconnections, and LIHEAP Shaped Household Energy Strategies During the Pandemic

Introduction

For many Americans, thermal comfort is as easy as adjusting the thermostat. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, this basic action was out of reach for millions. Faced with rising household energy demand, job loss, and economic distress, families across the country made painful decisions: pay the utility bill or buy food; stay at a comfortable temperature or afford medication. Over half of low-income households reported using at least one coping strategy to manage their energy bills—and many relied on multiple strategies simultaneously (Carley et al. 2022).

These coping strategies—such as keeping homes at unsafe indoor temperatures or cutting back on food, medicine, or other essentials—carry serious health risks. Exposure to extreme heat or cold can trigger respiratory illness, cardiovascular stress, or hypothermia. Trade-offs between energy and basic needs can lead to food insecurity, untreated medical conditions, and increased mental distress.

Studies have linked these resulting health conditions, rather than energy insecurity alone, to increased emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and long-term health consequences (Bhattacharya et al. 2003; Cook et al. 2008; Lou et al. 2021; Memmott et al. 2023). In this context, energy insecurity is more than an economic burden—it is a threat to public health.

While energy insecurity has long been concentrated among low-income populations, the COVID-19 pandemic extended hardship well beyond this group. The U.S. unemployment rate surged to 14.8% in April 2020—the highest level recorded since the Great Depression—triggering widespread household financial strain and pushing even middle-income families into energy vulnerability (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2021). At the same time, lockdowns dramatically altered daily routines: households spent more time indoors than ever before, making residential energy use less discretionary and amplifying exposure to thermal stress (Krarti and Aldubyan 2021; Lou et al. 2021; Barrero et al. 2023).

The challenges observed during the pandemic suggest that energy insecurity may not be limited to poverty alone, but also reflects broader systemic vulnerabilities tied to housing conditions, climate stress, and fragmented policy support. This expansion of hardship underscores the need to move beyond traditional poverty-based metrics of energy insecurity (Carley et al. 2021). Taken together, these findings suggest that energy insecurity is not solely a function of income, but an emergent outcome of interacting climatic, infrastructural, and policy conditions. A more comprehensive energy justice framework must account for structural vulnerabilities, climate-related stressors, and crisis-induced risks that can affect a wide swath of the population.

These structural vulnerabilities are further intensified by climate-related energy costs and long-standing housing and energy system inequities. Households of color are more likely to live in areas with higher cooling demand (Jesdale et al. 2013) and rely on all-electric systems to maintain indoor comfort—often reflecting historical underinvestment in gas infrastructure. They are also more likely to experience exclusion from homeownership, with a greater concentration living in rental housing with limited heating and cooling options (Harrison and Popke 2011). In addition, these households disproportionately occupy homes with inefficient building envelopes that increase energy waste and thermal vulnerability (Brown et al. 2020).

While electrification is often promoted as a cost-saving and climate-resilient strategy, its impacts depend critically on underlying housing and energy system conditions. In practice, households reliant on all-electric systems may face sharply increased electricity demand during extreme heat, particularly when cooling systems are inefficient, when buildings lack adequate insulation, or when residents have limited ability to upgrade appliances or housing infrastructure. These structural constraints can translate into higher electricity usage and elevated energy costs per square foot—especially during heat extremes—compounding financial stress and increasing the risk of utility shutoffs. In this way, electrification under unequal structural conditions may inadvertently amplify, rather than alleviate, energy insecurity.

As climate-driven thermal extremes become more common, these dynamics underscore the urgent need to integrate climate risk into energy assistance policies. Recent work by Carley and Konisky (2025) indicates how traditional programs like LIHEAP remain misaligned with current climate realities, particularly by prioritizing winter heating over summer cooling need. Our findings further support the call for modernizing energy insecurity policies to better address heat-related risks and ensure equitable protection for vulnerable households.

By mid-2020, more than 12 million U.S. households had received utility disconnection notices, highlighting the widespread and acute energy insecurity that accompanied the pandemic’s economic fallout (Congressional Research Service 2020). In response, the federal government provided an infusion of $3.7 billion in LIHEAP emergency relief funds to help struggling households cover energy bills and avoid shutoffs.

LIHEAP has long served as the nation’s primary energy safety net, yet its reach remains limited: in a typical year, only about one in five income-eligible households receive assistance, due to funding constraints. The program also suffers from administrative barriers and limited program uptake among certain vulnerable populations (Perl 2018). While the program is designed to reduce energy-related hardship, it remains unclear whether LIHEAP effectively protected at-risk households during the pandemic from having to adopt harmful coping strategies —particularly those facing utility disconnection.

This policy digest investigates how energy coping strategies unfolded across U.S. households during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether access to LIHEAP helped buffer households from the most harmful outcomes. In particular, we examine how the intersection of economic vulnerability and climate-related heat exposure shaped behavioral responses to energy insecurity.

Drawing on nationally representative data, the findings highlight which households were most at risk of utility disconnection and whether this longstanding federal program provided meaningful protection during a period of compounding hardship driven by both financial strain and extreme weather.

Methods

This study uses data from the 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), a nationally representative survey of U.S. households (N = 18,470). The primary outcome is a three-level ordinal variable indicating self-reported household coping severity during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: (0) no coping, (1) one coping strategy, or (2) both strategies—defined as enduring unsafe indoor temperatures and reducing spending on basic needs (e.g., food or medication).

Key predictors of household energy coping insecurity include receipt of a utility disconnection notice, receipt of LIHEAP assistance, and exposure to extreme heat, measured by Cooling Degree Days (CDDs), a standardized measure of outdoor heat exposure that reflects by how much daily temperatures exceed 65 °F and serves as a proxy for national-level cooling demand. We employ an ordinal logistic regression to estimate the associations between these variables and coping severity. Interaction terms assess whether LIHEAP modifies the relationship between disconnection status and coping. We calculate marginal predicted probabilities across quartiles of heat exposure to explore variation by climate stress.

Covariates include housing tenure, household income, energy cost per square foot, and reliance on electric-only heating and cooling systems. We weight all analyses to ensure national representativeness.

Results

Coping Behaviors Were Most Common—and Most Severe—Among Households Without LIHEAP and at Risk of Utility Disconnection

Households reporting a utility disconnection notice and severe coping behaviors—such as enduring unsafe indoor temperatures and reducing spending on basic needs—exhibited high levels of financial strain during the pandemic. Our analysis reveals that coping strategies were not only widespread—but cumulative, especially for those without energy assistance.

As shown in Figure 1, about 60% of households who received a utility disconnection notice in 2020 and did not receive LIHEAP in the same year reported using coping strategies including enduring unsafe indoor temperatures and reducing spending on basic needs. In contrast, among similar households that received LIHEAP in 2020, only about 35% used both strategies.

These patterns suggest that while coping strategies may appear voluntary, they often reflect structural constraints. Among households that faced disconnection risk, those able to access LIHEAP assistance also reported fewer coping strategies—highlighting disparities in energy-related hardship during the pandemic.

LIHEAP is Associated with Reduced Coping Severitiy in Response to Energy Insecurity, Especially Under Hotter Conditions

To assess whether LIHEAP funding moderated household energy coping behaviors during the pandemic, we conducted ordinal logistic regression focusing on the predicted probability of adopting coping strategies—enduring unsafe indoor temperatures, cutting back on basic needs, or both—across policy groups defined by LIHEAP receipt and exposure to utility disconnection.

The base model confirmed that disconnection notices were a strong predictor variable (Odds ratio [OR] = 9.31, p < 0.001). Importantly, the interaction between disconnection and LIHEAP receipt was statistically significant and negative (β = –0.99, p < 0.001), indicating that receiving LIHEAP funding moderated the relationship by reducing the number of coping strategies reported among households that experienced a utility disconnection. Households that received both a disconnection notice and LIHEAP assistance had 63% lower odds of adopting more severe coping strategies compared to those who did not receive LIHEAP funds.

Beyond these average effects, stratified marginal analyses revealed more nuanced patterns under conditions of heat stress. Using quartile classifications of CDDs, we examined how the probability of coping behaviors varied across four levels of heat exposure. In this framework, the first quartile (Q1) represents the least hot environments, while the fourth quartile (Q4) corresponds to the most extreme heat exposures. As shown in Figure 2, two key patterns emerged.

First, heat exposure is associated with more intense coping severity. Across all policy groups, higher CDD quartiles were associated with lower probabilities of using no coping strategy and higher probabilities of using one or both coping strategies. Among households that received a utility disconnection notice but did not receive LIHEAP funding, the predicted probability of using both coping strategies increased under extreme heat exposure—from approximately 19.0% in the second quartile (Q2) to 22.2% in the hottest quartile (Q4).

Formal contrasts indicate that the increase in coping severity in the hottest quartile is statistically significant relative to the lowest heat exposure quartile (difference = +3.8 percentage points; p = 0.012). Concurrently, the predicted probability of using no coping strategy declined by around 4%, indicating a growing behavioral burden as temperatures increased.

Second, LIHEAP buffering effects persist across climate stress levels. LIHEAP support was consistently associated with a lower predicted probability of adopting both coping strategies—even under conditions of extreme heat. Among households at risk of utility disconnection, those receiving LIHEAP were approximately 2 percentage points less likely to engage in both behaviors compared to non-recipients. In the hottest quartile (Q4), 22.2% of households facing utility disconnection without LIHEAP funding reported using both coping strategies, compared to 20.2% of those facing utlitity disconnection but received LIHEAP. Although the absolute difference is modest, formal contrasts of model-based predicted probabilities indicate that this gap is statistically significant (p = 0.011), suggesting that LIHEAP provided partial buffering against severe energy-related hardship even under high thermal stress.

These findings illustrate that LIHEAP was not only associated with a lower average severity of energy coping strategies, but also potentially buffered households against escalating behavioral risks under rising heat exposure.

In short, households facing both economic and environmental vulnerability were most likely to benefit from targeted assistance. However, the persistence of coping behavior, even among LIHEAP recipients, signals unmet need and structural limitations in the reach or adequacy of the program.

Other Notable Findings

Beyond disconnection status and climate stress, several structural factors were associated with more severe coping behavior. Households with higher energy costs per square foot faced 22% higher odds of adopting multiple coping strategies (p < 0.001), indicating that relatively low energy efficiency may increase household financial strain by requiring disproportionately high energy expenditures relative to dwelling size, even when total energy consumption is not high. Private renters had 36% higher odds of coping than homeowners, reflecting limited control over housing conditions and energy infrastructure.

Additionally, households in all-electric homes faced 10% higher odds of engaging in more severe coping behaviors—a marginally significant trend (p = 0.075) that underscores vulnerability in certain building systems. While electrification is widely promoted as a climate solution to lower emissions and utility costs, our findings indicate that certain all-electric building systems—particularly in housing with higher energy costs per square foot, reflecting lower energy cost efficiency—may amplify household vulnerability.

These results underscore the importance of equitable electrification efforts that prioritize energy-efficient retrofits and targeted support for high-burden households. Notably, our findings are consistent with recent evidence showing that, without concurrent retrofits and equity-focused measures, residential electrification may exacerbate energy and social inequalities (Lippeatt and Sareen 2023)

Limitations and Interpretation

It is important to note that this study is observational and cross-sectional in nature. While the analysis identifies strong correlations between LIHEAP receipt, disconnection status, climate exposure, and coping behaviors, it does not allow for causal inference. Households are not randomly assigned to receive LIHEAP, and unobserved factors—such as prior arrears, application barriers, or state-level program differences—may also influence outcomes. Nor can we guarantee that one received LIHEAP assistance before the outcome of interest, rather than the other way around. As such, we cannot definitively conclude that either LIHEAP funding or disconnection risk caused changes in coping severity.

Nonetheless, the magnitude and consistency of the associations observed—especially under conditions of extreme heat and utility disconnection—underscore the potential importance of targeted assistance during times of crisis. These findings complement prior studies on energy insecurity and contribute new evidence on behavioral responses to layered vulnerabilities during the pandemic.

While the policy recommendations that follow reflect themes widely discussed in national energy justice conversations, they are grounded in the specific correlational insights of this study. The observed patterns help identify high-priority reforms—such as climate-sensitive eligibility criteria and protections against disconnection—that warrant urgent consideration.

Future research using longitudinal or experimental designs could more precisely test causal pathways. In the meantime, the findings presented here offer timely, evidence-informed guidance for strengthening energy assistance policy and protecting public health under future crises.

Policy Recommendations

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted deep structural gaps in the nation’s energy safety net. Our findings suggest that LIHEAP receipt was associated with reduced coping severity among some of the most vulnerable households, particularly those facing utility disconnection and extreme heat. However, because the program reached only a fraction of eligible households during this period, many at-risk families likely remained unprotected.

Rather than indicating program ineffectiveness, our results underscore the need to expand LIHEAP’s funding and outreach capacity to support a broader swath of energy-insecure households in future crises. These findings reinforce prior policy discussions in the energy justice literature and point to several high-priority reforms that align with the observed patterns in this study.

Rather than offering an exhaustive set of recommendations, we emphasize four targeted solutions that are most closely connected to the empirical patterns uncovered in our analysis. We recommend the following:

1. Expand LIHEAP Funding and Outreach. We recommend an expansion of LIHEAP to reach more eligible households. Although LIHEAP funding was associated with reduced coping severity, it served only a fraction of eligible households. Increasing federal appropriations and modernizing outreach—such as automatic enrollment for other benefit recipients—could enhance reach and equity. In addition to renters and those living in high-heat burden areas, particular attention should be paid to households reliant on all-electric systems in hot climate regions, where cooling demand and elevated energy costs may increase vulnerability during periods of extreme heat.
2. Integrate climate risk into energy assistance eligibility and targeting. Our findings show that extreme heat exposure is linked to increased coping severity. Integrating climate indicators—such as CDDs—into LIHEAP eligibility, allocation formulas, and benefit levels could better align support with thermal vulnerability, particularly as climate extremes worsen.
3. Strengthen protections against utility disconnections during emergencies. Disconnection risk was strongly correlated with harmful coping behaviors. Enacting stronger utility shutoff protections—especially during heatwaves and public health emergencies—could help reduce dangerous trade-offs. Universal moratoria and clearer regulatory safeguards are key policy tools.
4. Address structural drivers through housing and energy efficiency investments. Households in rental units, all-electric homes, and energy-inefficient buildings faced elevated risk. Investments in weatherization, insulation, and efficient cooling technologies—particularly in disadvantaged communities—can reduce long-term energy burdens and mitigate vulnerability.

Conclusion

The pandemic revealed how quickly energy insecurity can escalate into a public health crisis—especially when intersecting with climate stress, economic instability, and housing precarity. While LIHEAP plays a critical buffering role, it cannot shoulder this burden alone. Strengthening energy protections, targeting structural vulnerabilities, and aligning assistance programs with climate realities are not just policy upgrades, they are public health imperatives. Building a more equitable and resilient energy safety net will require sustained investment, cross-sector coordination, and a commitment to reaching those most at risk.

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