Equity and Electricity: Race Gap in Household Energy Use, with Eva Lyubich |
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In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Eva Lyubich, a PhD student in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a researcher at the Energy Institute at Haas. Lyubich elaborates on her recent working paper which reveals that black households in the United States pay higher energy bills on average than white households. Connecting her research to ongoing conversations about environmental justice, Lyubich discusses how these disparities stem in part from historically discriminatory policies that have restricted black Americans’ housing choices and ability to invest in energy efficiency. |
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- A clean energy transition must account for inequity: “Energy efficiency improvements are seen as low-hanging fruit for reducing excess energy consumption. Joe Biden's most recent climate plan reflects this. He includes a transition to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and investment into the weatherization of two million homes. These transitions can be designed in ways that either mitigate or exacerbate existing inequalities … Understanding what those inequalities are is a crucial first step to designing transitions well.” (4:52)
- Black renters and homeowners generally face higher energy costs: “What I find is that … black renters spend $273 more a year than white renters, and black homeowners spend $408 a year more than white homeowners. This ends up being a gap of about 15 percent over annual average expenditures for both renters and homeowners.” (9:28)
- A history of racial discrimination impacts energy efficiency today: “It's so important to [understand] these results in the context of history … Given that energy efficiency depends on capital stock, which requires high up-front costs to invest in, historical policies that excluded black people from homeownership or wealth accumulation or accessing credit could all have been important to contributing to these large differences [in energy expenditures between white and black households].” (13:42)
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| Resources for the Future (RFF) is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. |
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