Energy poverty and home-energy burden by state
State ratio: 2024 EIA SEDS and Census ACS 1-year data · Updated September 04, 2026
In 2024, U.S. residential energy expenditure equaled 2.2% of aggregate household income, a ratio computed from EIA SEDS residential expenditure and Census ACS aggregate household income, both dated 2024. Maine had the highest state point estimate, at 3.5%, while District of Columbia had the lowest, at 1.2%, on those same 2024 sources. The United States has no single federal statutory definition of energy poverty. Federal law uses the phrase once in an international-cooperation finding without defining it; LIHEAP law instead targets low-income households with high home-energy costs relative to income.
What is energy poverty?
The United States has no single federal statutory definition of energy poverty. An exact-phrase search of the U.S. Code found the phrase in an international-cooperation finding, but that provision does not define it. The LIHEAP statute, 42 U.S.C. § 8621, instead directs assistance toward low-income households with high home-energy costs relative to income.
England uses a different official concept, the Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) measure. It is used to track England's statutory fuel-poverty target; it is not itself a statutory metric and is not comparable to the state ratio on this page.
What is energy burden?
Energy burden is a generic term used by DOE and researchers for home-energy costs relative to household income. ACEEE is a prominent user. DOE's LEAD tool defines its group-level burden as average annual housing energy cost divided by average annual household income. LEAD calls 6% or more high burden, following an operational convention associated with the Fisher, Sheehan and Colton affordability lineage. That is DOE LEAD's convention, not a threshold adopted by Energy Factbook.
Our state measure is narrower and ecological: total estimated purchased residential energy expenditure divided by total household income statewide. It is never an estimate of the average household's burden and does not show the distribution within a state.
What is energy insecurity?
EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey uses household energy insecurity for reported experiences such as reducing food or medicine, keeping a home at an unhealthy temperature, receiving a disconnection notice, or being unable to use heating or air conditioning. It is an experience-based layer, not the cost-to-income ratio above.
State share of statewide household income spent on home energy
Data. All rows use 2024 EIA SEDS TERCV residential expenditure and 2024 Census ACS 1-year tables B19025, B19013, and B11001. Spending per household is a scale aid; the reported spine remains total expenditure divided by aggregate income. Rankings use point estimates. Values that round to the same one-decimal burden are shown as ties.
| Rank (point estimate) | State | Share of income spent on home energy | Spending per household ($/yr) | Median income ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tie for 1 | Maine | 3.5% | 3,633 | 76,442 |
| tie for 1 | West Virginia | 3.5% | 2,816 | 60,798 |
| 3 | Rhode Island | 3.3% | 3,723 | 83,504 |
| 4 | Vermont | 3.2% | 3,502 | 82,730 |
| 5 | Mississippi | 3.1% | 2,494 | 59,127 |
| tie for 6 | Alabama | 3.0% | 2,748 | 66,659 |
| tie for 6 | Connecticut | 3.0% | 4,161 | 96,049 |
| tie for 6 | Alaska | 3.0% | 3,621 | 95,665 |
| 9 | New Hampshire | 2.9% | 3,741 | 99,782 |
| tie for 10 | Arkansas | 2.7% | 2,303 | 62,106 |
| tie for 10 | Oklahoma | 2.7% | 2,409 | 66,148 |
| tie for 12 | Louisiana | 2.6% | 2,278 | 60,986 |
| tie for 12 | Pennsylvania | 2.6% | 2,795 | 77,545 |
| tie for 12 | Ohio | 2.6% | 2,528 | 72,212 |
| tie for 12 | Missouri | 2.6% | 2,484 | 71,589 |
| tie for 16 | Massachusetts | 2.5% | 3,669 | 104,828 |
| tie for 16 | Kentucky | 2.5% | 2,211 | 64,526 |
| tie for 16 | Michigan | 2.5% | 2,484 | 72,389 |
| tie for 16 | Georgia | 2.5% | 2,705 | 79,991 |
| tie for 16 | South Carolina | 2.5% | 2,412 | 72,350 |
| tie for 16 | Delaware | 2.5% | 2,815 | 87,534 |
| tie for 16 | Indiana | 2.5% | 2,345 | 71,959 |
| tie for 23 | Wyoming | 2.3% | 2,362 | 75,532 |
| tie for 23 | Kansas | 2.3% | 2,336 | 75,514 |
| tie for 23 | Nevada | 2.3% | 2,500 | 81,134 |
| tie for 23 | Montana | 2.3% | 2,315 | 75,340 |
| tie for 23 | North Carolina | 2.3% | 2,357 | 73,958 |
| tie for 28 | South Dakota | 2.2% | 2,253 | 76,881 |
| tie for 28 | Texas | 2.2% | 2,503 | 79,721 |
| tie for 28 | New York | 2.2% | 2,861 | 85,820 |
| tie for 28 | Iowa | 2.2% | 2,139 | 75,501 |
| tie for 28 | Wisconsin | 2.2% | 2,232 | 77,488 |
| tie for 28 | North Dakota | 2.2% | 2,252 | 77,871 |
| tie for 28 | Tennessee | 2.2% | 2,164 | 71,997 |
| tie for 35 | Arizona | 2.1% | 2,360 | 81,486 |
| tie for 35 | Idaho | 2.1% | 2,164 | 81,166 |
| tie for 37 | Florida | 2.0% | 2,223 | 77,735 |
| tie for 37 | Maryland | 2.0% | 2,769 | 102,905 |
| tie for 37 | Nebraska | 2.0% | 1,981 | 76,376 |
| tie for 37 | Oregon | 2.0% | 2,176 | 85,220 |
| tie for 37 | Illinois | 2.0% | 2,256 | 83,211 |
| tie for 42 | Minnesota | 1.9% | 2,256 | 87,117 |
| tie for 42 | Virginia | 1.9% | 2,460 | 92,090 |
| tie for 42 | New Mexico | 1.9% | 1,772 | 67,816 |
| tie for 42 | California | 1.9% | 2,630 | 100,149 |
| tie for 46 | New Jersey | 1.8% | 2,646 | 104,294 |
| tie for 46 | Hawaii | 1.8% | 2,414 | 100,745 |
| 48 | Utah | 1.7% | 2,111 | 96,658 |
| 49 | Colorado | 1.5% | 1,926 | 97,113 |
| 50 | Washington | 1.4% | 1,916 | 99,389 |
| 51 | District of Columbia | 1.2% | 1,883 | 109,707 |
| — | United States | 2.2% | 2,511 | 81,604 |
Formula: SEDS TERCV million dollars × 1,000,000 ÷ ACS B19025 dollars × 100. SEDS estimates purchased residential energy expenditure; direct solar, geothermal and other energy with no direct household purchase are outside that numerator. See methodology.
The national ratio over time
Annual U.S. SEDS TERCV and ACS 1-year B19025, 2021–2024. The chart leaves 2020 blank because the Census Bureau did not publish standard 2020 ACS 1-year estimates. No value is interpolated.
Electricity prices across burden quartiles
Data. States are ordered by the 2024 burden point estimate, with state-code order
breaking exact ties, then assigned 13/13/13/12 to quartiles from highest to lowest burden. Each rate is the
2024 unweighted mean across included states of 100 × sum(12 months' residential revenue)
÷ sum(12 months' residential sales), from the
EIA monthly retail-sales series.
| Burden quartile | States assigned | States with 12 rate months | Mean effective residential rate (¢/kWh) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (highest burden) | 13 | 13 | 19.2 |
| Q2 (middle burden) | 13 | 13 | 15.7 |
| Q3 (middle burden) | 13 | 13 | 14.7 |
| Q4 (lowest burden) | 12 | 12 | 18.8 |
Interpretation. The highest- and lowest-burden quartiles differ by only 0.4 cents per kWh, little difference on this comparison. Electricity spending is part of the home-energy numerator, so a mechanical positive component exists. This comparison asks about its size. Income's inverse relationship with the ratio is arithmetic because income is the denominator. These are state associations, not causal estimates; no policy variable is tested here.
Two limits keep this comparison from saying more than it can. First, the ratio nets price against quantity: a mild-climate, low-usage state can pair the nation's highest energy prices with a low ratio, so a low ratio is not evidence that energy is cheap there — the price section below separates the two. Second, the ratio counts what households actually spent, not what they needed: a household that keeps an unhealthy indoor temperature to hold its bill down shows a lower ratio, not a higher one. EIA RECS measures that experience directly (the insecurity tables on this page), and England's official fuel-poverty statistics model required rather than actual energy spending for exactly this reason.
How much of it is price?
Data. EIA SEDS publishes each state's residential price, consumption and expenditure for the four priced fuels, which carried 99.4% of U.S. residential energy expenditure in 2024: electricity, natural gas, heating oil (distillate) and propane. Two computations separate price from usage. The bundle cost prices the average U.S. household's actual 2024 fuel purchases at each state's prices: the same bundle everywhere, so climate and usage cancel out and only prices differ. The price effect splits each state's actual per-household four-fuel spending gap against the U.S. into the part from paying different prices for what its households used, and the part from using different amounts (the quantity effect); the two parts sum exactly to the gap.
Priced at 2024 state rates, the average U.S. household's fuel purchases would cost $6,886 a year in Hawaii and $1,718 in North Dakota, against $2,495 at national-average prices. On the actual-usage split, California households paid $1,114 more per year than national-average prices for the energy they used, while Mississippi households paid $458 less: a low ratio and a high price can coexist, and this table shows both directions.
| Rank | State | U.S. bundle at state prices ($/yr) | Price effect ($/yr) | Quantity effect ($/yr) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | 6,886 | +1,486 | −1,567 |
| 2 | California | 4,404 | +1,114 | −987 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | 4,237 | +1,244 | −89 |
| 4 | Rhode Island | 4,140 | +1,138 | +12 |
| 5 | Connecticut | 3,997 | +1,185 | +418 |
| 6 | Maine | 3,540 | +736 | +258 |
| 7 | New York | 3,480 | +645 | −313 |
| 8 | New Hampshire | 3,436 | +771 | +377 |
| 9 | Alaska | 3,374 | +492 | +585 |
| 10 | Vermont | 3,225 | +657 | +229 |
| 11 | New Jersey | 2,806 | +181 | −40 |
| 12 | District of Columbia | 2,744 | +164 | −776 |
| 13 | Maryland | 2,744 | +242 | +21 |
| 14 | Michigan | 2,666 | −58 | +25 |
| 15 | Florida | 2,663 | −320 | +48 |
| 16 | Pennsylvania | 2,623 | +123 | +144 |
| 17 | Delaware | 2,552 | +74 | +235 |
| 18 | Arizona | 2,549 | −121 | −21 |
| 19 | Nevada | 2,492 | −18 | +14 |
| 20 | Alabama | 2,482 | −146 | +391 |
| 21 | Texas | 2,446 | −154 | +160 |
| 22 | Ohio | 2,410 | −103 | +118 |
| 23 | Wisconsin | 2,395 | −239 | −46 |
| 24 | West Virginia | 2,382 | −158 | +447 |
| 25 | Georgia | 2,377 | −221 | +427 |
| 26 | South Carolina | 2,366 | −273 | +185 |
| 27 | Oregon | 2,329 | −179 | −183 |
| 28 | North Carolina | 2,327 | −262 | +112 |
| 29 | Virginia | 2,326 | −219 | +158 |
| 30 | Illinois | 2,291 | −319 | +74 |
| 31 | Minnesota | 2,230 | −374 | +115 |
| 32 | Mississippi | 2,187 | −458 | +453 |
| 33 | Colorado | 2,176 | −351 | −230 |
| 34 | Kansas | 2,168 | −368 | +202 |
| 35 | Missouri | 2,166 | −438 | +416 |
| 36 | Indiana | 2,125 | −466 | +306 |
| 37 | Arkansas | 2,079 | −582 | +370 |
| 38 | New Mexico | 2,053 | −411 | −348 |
| 39 | Kentucky | 2,046 | −541 | +245 |
| 40 | Louisiana | 2,037 | −754 | +536 |
| 41 | Oklahoma | 1,987 | −677 | +576 |
| 42 | Iowa | 1,969 | −669 | +303 |
| 43 | Utah | 1,965 | −516 | +115 |
| 44 | Wyoming | 1,960 | −602 | +439 |
| 45 | Tennessee | 1,916 | −694 | +354 |
| 46 | Washington | 1,911 | −623 | +23 |
| 47 | South Dakota | 1,880 | −742 | +487 |
| 48 | Montana | 1,835 | −826 | +586 |
| 49 | Nebraska | 1,771 | −833 | +313 |
| 50 | Idaho | 1,743 | −911 | +539 |
| 51 | North Dakota | 1,718 | −1,047 | +800 |
| — | United States | 2,495 | — | — |
Worked example. California's households spent $2,621 per household on the four fuels in 2024, against $2,495 nationally: a gap of +$126. Of that, +$1,114 comes from prices and −$987 from quantities; the two sum to the gap exactly, by construction.
Source: EIA SEDS residential series, 2024: price, consumption and expenditure for electricity (ESRCD/ESRCB/ESRCV), natural gas (NGRCD/NGRCB/NGRCV), distillate fuel oil (DFRCD/DFRCB/DFRCV) and propane (PQRCD/PQRCB/PQRCV), divided by Census ACS households. Four-fuel spending here is price × quantity; SEDS's separately published expenditure differs from that product only for distillate (1.4% nationally), a gap that appears from 2021 on, when renewable heating-fuel blend requirements began in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Where a state has no market for a fuel, the bundle prices that fuel's national share at the national price. The decomposition holds each state's quantities fixed: at different prices households would use different amounts, so these are accounting components of the observed gap, not estimates of what anyone would pay under other prices or policies.
RECS 2024 preliminary energy insecurity
Data. EIA released these preliminary 2024 household estimates in March 2026. The denominator is 132.54 million households in the official HC11.1 workbook, verified 2026-08-22. Respondents may report more than one experience, so the rows must not be added.
| Reported experience | Households (millions) | Share of households | RSE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any household energy insecurity | 43.56 | 32.9% | 1.35% |
| Reduced or forgone food or medicine | 32.89 | 24.8% | 1.90% |
| Kept home at an unhealthy temperature | 17.55 | 13.2% | 2.28% |
| Received a disconnection notice | 16.19 | 12.2% | 2.77% |
| Unable to use heating equipment | 6.83 | 5.2% | 4.88% |
| Unable to use air-conditioning equipment | 8.16 | 6.2% | 3.97% |
Any reported energy insecurity by household income
| Annual household income | Households (millions) | Any energy insecurity | RSE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Less than $10,000 | 6.23 | 63.7% | 5.45% |
| $10,000 to $14,999 | 5.90 | 58.3% | 6.01% |
| $15,000 to $29,999 | 13.42 | 51.4% | 4.27% |
| $30,000 to $59,999 | 30.96 | 41.4% | 3.20% |
| $60,000 to $99,999 | 29.41 | 32.1% | 3.65% |
| $100,000 to $199,999 | 32.30 | 18.2% | 4.26% |
| $200,000 or more | 14.32 | 7.5% | 10.63% |
Interpretation. These self-reported experiences become more common in lower income groups, but the table does not identify a cause or prescribe a remedy.
LIHEAP assistance
The LIHEAP Data Warehouse reports 4,808,087 assisted heating households for federal fiscal year 2025, marked preliminary and verified 2026-08-22. All reporting grantees summed; excludes territories and direct-funded Indian tribes or tribal organizations. Heating assistance is an unduplicated household count within that assistance type. This is a program-service count, not a population prevalence estimate. Weatherization is a separate program and is not detailed here.
International contrast
England. Under the official Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) measure, DESNZ reports 2,472,000 households, or 9.9%, in fuel poverty in 2024. The release is final and was verified 2026-08-22. LILEE combines low income with low home energy efficiency; it is not the U.S. aggregate ratio.
European Union. Eurostat ilc_mdes01 reports that 8.8% of the EU-27 population said they could not keep their home adequately warm in 2025, verified 2026-08-22. EU-SILC self-reported population share for the EU-27, not a household energy-burden rate. These two international figures use different units and definitions, so this page does not rank them against U.S. states or each other.
Gasoline affordability is separate
Home energy does not include motor gasoline. In July 2026, the BLS U.S. city average for gasoline, all types was $4.24 per gallon. At BLS average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory private workers of $32.28 per hour in the same month, one gallon represented 7.9 minutes of work. See the full gasoline affordability record. This figure is never added to the home-energy share.
DOE LEAD low-income comparison
DOE's LEAD tool reports a national average burden of 6% for low-income households and 2% for non-low-income households. The current release uses 2018-2022 ACS five-year PUMS centered on 2022, calibrated to 2022 EIA Form 861 electricity and Form 176 natural-gas data. The comparison was verified 2026-08-22 and has a machine-readable release at DOE's OEDI submission 6219. LEAD is a cited low-income comparison; Energy Factbook does not rebuild its household model.
Questions people ask
What is energy poverty in the United States?
The United States has no single federal statutory definition of energy poverty. Federal law uses the phrase once in an international-cooperation finding without defining it; LIHEAP law instead targets low-income households with high home-energy costs relative to income.
What is energy burden?
Energy burden is the share of household income spent on home energy. DOE LEAD uses average housing energy cost divided by average household income and calls 6% or more high burden. Energy Factbook reports that convention but does not adopt a threshold.
Where would the average household's energy bill be highest?
Priced at each state's 2024 residential rates, the average U.S. household's actual fuel purchases would cost the most in Hawaii ($6,886 per year) and the least in North Dakota ($1,718), against $2,495 at national-average prices. This is a pure price comparison; the bundle of fuels is the same for every state.
What is household energy insecurity?
EIA RECS uses household energy insecurity for reported experiences such as reducing food or medicine, keeping the home at an unhealthy temperature, receiving a disconnection notice, or being unable to use heating or air conditioning.
Does this page add gasoline costs to home energy?
No. Gasoline is shown separately as minutes of work per gallon and is never added to the home-energy ratio.