When the thermostat hits 95 degrees in a poorly insulated apartment, the arithmetic is brutal: run the window unit and fall further behind on the electric bill, or sweat it out and hope no one in the household ends up in the emergency room. That is the calculation roughly one in six American households is making right now. According to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, about 16 percent of U.S. households have been unable to pay an energy bill in a given month, a rate that has barely budged in over two years. Meanwhile, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), which tracks utility debt through state-level assistance data and utility filings, projects that total unpaid household energy balances nationwide are on pace to reach $23 billion by the end of 2026, a figure that would set a record.
The numbers land at a moment when the main federal program designed to help, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), faces an uncertain future in congressional budget negotiations. The gap between what families owe and what existing aid can cover is not shrinking. It is widening.
Why bills keep outrunning paychecks
The pressure is coming from multiple directions at once. Natural gas and electricity rates spiked during 2022 and 2023. Wholesale prices have since cooled, but retail rates have not followed them down. Utilities that locked in fuel contracts or launched grid-upgrade projects during the price surge are recovering those costs through multi-year rate cases approved by state regulators. Residential electricity prices rose roughly 15 percent between early 2022 and late 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and additional rate increases have been approved or are pending in dozens of states heading into summer 2026.
For a household earning $35,000 a year, even a $40-per-month jump in a combined gas-and-electric bill forces a real tradeoff: air conditioning or groceries, medication or the minimum payment.
Housing quality deepens the problem. Millions of renters live in older buildings with thin insulation, aging HVAC systems, and single-pane windows. These families pay more per square foot to heat and cool their homes, a penalty researchers call the “energy burden.” The Department of Energy has found that low-income households spend roughly three times the share of their income on energy compared with higher-income households. Renters rarely have the authority or the capital to upgrade a landlord’s building, so the penalty persists year after year.
Climate is tightening the squeeze from both ends of the calendar. Hotter summers push cooling demand higher, while volatile winter storms can spike heating costs overnight. The old framing of energy assistance as a “heating season” issue no longer holds. Dangerously high indoor temperatures during summer heat waves now pose health risks on par with winter cold, particularly for elderly residents, young children, and people managing chronic illness.
What federal data reveals, and where the picture gets fuzzy
Two federal data programs anchor the most reliable facts. The Household Pulse Survey, administered by the Census Bureau, asks respondents whether they were unable to pay an energy bill in the prior month. As of spring 2026, that share has hovered near 16 percent for more than two years, translating directly into the “one in six” figure. The survey captures self-reported hardship rather than dollar amounts owed, so it establishes how widespread the problem is without quantifying exact balances.
On the disconnection side, the Energy Information Administration’s Form EIA-112 compiles monthly data from utilities on final notices, service terminations, and reconnections. During the federal fiscal year 2024 reporting cycle, utilities reported approximately 13 million disconnection events, the first standardized federal count of shutoffs. An important caveat: the form tallies how many times service was cut, not how many unique households lost power. A single family disconnected and reconnected twice registers as two events.
Neither instrument directly reports a running national total of unpaid bills. That is where NEADA’s projections come in. The association builds its estimates from state-level utility filings and data collected through assistance programs, then extrapolates to a national figure. The $23 billion projection signals scale and trajectory, but it is an informed approximation, not an audited ledger. Readers should treat it as directionally reliable rather than precise to the dollar.
LIHEAP: a lifeline that was never big enough
The primary federal tool for energy-bill relief is LIHEAP. The Department of Health and Human Services released the initial block grants for fiscal year 2026 earlier this federal fiscal year, distributing approximately $4 billion to states, tribes, and territories. Those jurisdictions then set eligibility thresholds and benefit levels and push payments out to qualifying households.
“LIHEAP was designed as emergency relief, not as a program to zero out years of accumulated debt,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of NEADA, in public comments accompanying the association’s most recent data release. In a typical year, the program reaches between five and six million households. With roughly 20 million households reporting difficulty paying energy bills, the gap is enormous. Average benefits vary by state but often cover only one or two months of arrears, barely denting a balance that may have compounded over multiple seasons.
The program’s future funding is itself uncertain. The White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal initially sought deep cuts to LIHEAP, and while Congress has historically restored funding, the annual brinkmanship leaves state administrators unable to plan and families unsure whether help will arrive. Any reduction in LIHEAP dollars would widen the gap between what households owe and what the safety net can absorb.
A patchwork of state rules decides who loses power
State-level regulation adds another layer of unpredictability. Utility commissions in each state set their own rules on when companies can disconnect service, how much notice they must provide, and what payment-plan options must be offered before the power goes off. Some states impose winter moratoriums that block shutoffs during the coldest months. Fewer extend similar protections during extreme summer heat, even as heat-related mortality has climbed.
The result is that a family’s risk of losing electricity depends not just on how much it owes but on its zip code. A household $500 behind in Georgia, which has limited disconnection protections, faces a different reality than a household $500 behind in New York, where regulators require utilities to offer deferred-payment agreements before terminating service. Regional disparities in disconnection rates visible in early EIA-112 data suggest that policy design matters as much as poverty rates in determining who sits in the dark.
Where to find help before the shutoff notice arrives
For families already behind, several resources exist beyond LIHEAP. Many utilities offer budget-billing plans that spread annual costs into equal monthly payments, smoothing out seasonal spikes so a $250 August electric bill does not land like a wrecking ball. Some states require utilities to provide arrearage management programs that forgive a portion of past-due balances over time in exchange for consistent current payments.
The federal Weatherization Assistance Program funds efficiency upgrades for low-income homes, including insulation, air sealing, and furnace replacement. Waitlists can stretch for months, but the improvements permanently reduce energy consumption and lower future bills. Households can contact their state energy office or dial 211, the national helpline that connects callers to local assistance programs, to learn what is available in their area.
None of these programs, alone or combined, are scaled to wipe out $23 billion in accumulated debt. But for a household staring at a final notice, knowing that a payment plan or forgiveness program exists can keep the lights on long enough to stabilize.
The debt keeps compounding, and the safety net is not keeping pace
What makes the current moment different from previous spikes in utility hardship is the persistence. Energy arrears surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but emergency federal aid and eviction moratoriums provided a temporary cushion. That cushion is gone. Pandemic-era utility protections have expired in nearly every state, and the supplemental LIHEAP funding Congress approved in 2021 and 2022 has been spent. Households that never fully recovered from pandemic-era debt are now layering new balances on top of old ones, and interest, late fees, and reconnection charges accelerate the spiral.
As additional years of EIA-112 data accumulate, researchers will be able to link disconnection patterns more directly to policy changes, weather events, and economic shocks. For now, the available evidence points in one direction: the number of families who cannot afford to power their homes is large, it is not falling, and the federal response remains far smaller than the problem it is trying to solve.
