Higher summer temperatures and energy costs mean almost 9% bigger bills for Arizonans

As the Valley’s temperatures settle into the triple digits, a new report finds we should expect to pay more to cool our homes this summer.

The National Energy Assistance Directors Association said on average, Americans will pay 8.5% more this summer than last year — that comes out to a $61 difference. The group defines summer as between June and September. In the Mountain region, which includes Arizona, the increase is expected to be 8.8%.

Mark Wolfe is executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents all state programs that help low-income households pay their heating and cooling bills. He joined The Show to talk more about this.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Mark, are the reasons for increased costs the same across the country or do they differ from region to region?

MARK WOLFE: I think the answer is both. So, overall, we’re going to have a hotter summer this year. And so, families will be using more electricity to cool their homes. So, in most parts of the country, the cost of electricity is going up. In many cases, faster than inflation. And then, on top of that, you need to use more electricity to cool your home.

So, we’re estimating that say in Arizona, for example, that the cost of summer cooling this year will go up from about $931 last year to about $1,013 this year. And we consider now the summer months, June to September. Of course, in Arizona, probably it’s May through possibly October. You know, your summer cooling period is really wide.

So, for families, you know, there’s nothing you can do about rising temperatures. And there’s nothing you can do about the price of electricity. The only thing you can do is manage your use of electricity better through efficiency, by trying to use less of it, by thinking about, you know, how high can you raise your cooling system in the summer in order to reduce consumption.

But the biggest problem is that prices have been going up relentlessly for the last four years. I think the real message here is this is that in the past, you know, not so long ago, seven, eight, 10 years ago, prices would go up, then they’d come back down again. Here we’re in a situation where prices are just going one direction, up.

MARK BRODIE: When you talk about, as you’re saying, prices are looking like they’re only going to keep going up, the same could most likely be said for temperatures, right? There’s really no evidence to suggest that we’re we’re going to be cooling in any meaningful way.

What are families thinking about right now? You mentioned thinking about efficiencies, but this seems like kind of a problem for a lot of folks if electricity is only going to continue to get more expensive and temperatures are only going to continue to go up.

MARK WOLFE: So what it is, is that you’re going to need to buy more of an expensive product. Some of this depends on your income. So people who are high income, for example, people who are in the top 10%, 20% of the income ladder, this doesn’t fall so heavily on them because right now, if you look at the averages, a high-income family spends maybe 3%, 4% of their income on home energy.

So if their cost of summer cooling goes up by 20%, maybe they’ll be spending 4%, at worst 5% of their income on home energy, and that’s affordable. They can manage that.

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But if you’re low income or middle income, you’re spending 5% to 10% of your income on home energy, and you have very little discretionary income left over. So if prices go up, something else has to give. So the cost of gasoline, for example, is going up right now, and your cost of summer cooling, you have to sacrifice in order to pay these higher costs. So I think that’s part of it is that I think some of this has to do with what’s your perspective on these prices.

But having said that, there’s a lot you can do to manage your usage of electricity in the summer to help reduce those costs. And it’s everything from as simple as closing the blinds during the day. There are things like turning down the temperature, or I guess essentially raising the temperature in your house during the summer months by even 3 degrees can save you 10% on your bill, by looking around the house for leaks and caulking those. All of that can help.

And one thing that we’re finding, you know, most of the people that our state programs help are families with low incomes. Now we’re hearing from middle-income families who are saying that they’re struggling to pay their electric bill. And for us that’s new. We really haven’t seen that before. And I think that reflects both the rising price of electricity, as well as other key expenses that are going up, in this case faster than inflation, and people are feeling very stretched.

And electricity is one place you can’t substitute. Now, for example, if the price of meat goes up, you can switch to chicken or something. Price of electricity goes up, you still need to use electricity.

MARK BRODIE: What kind of impact is the situation in D.C. over the LIHEAP program having on all this? The program that helps low-income residents pay for heating and cooling. I mean, we know that traditionally what money has been there has gone more toward cold-weather states than warm-weather states. It seems like that would maybe make this situation even a little worse.

MARK WOLFE: Yeah, that’s been a discussion for a while. The formula goes back to 1980, if you can believe it. And back then, the concern was winter heating. And as time went by, Congress changed the law to give heating and cooling equal weight, but they never funded the program well enough to take advantage of that.

And so when you look at it now, on a per capita basis, the Northeast, Midwest states represent about 40% of the U.S. population, they receive about 60% of the funds. But with increasing temperatures, the need to think about cooling is growing.

And I’ve been quite frustrated about that because to be quite honest, I thought Congress would have added more money to the program. We’ve asked them to. I thought, well, how many more years do we need of extreme temperatures before we realize that summer cooling is as important as winter heating? And I think that’s where the program is now. I mean, the administration proposed to kill the program altogether, if you remember. But I don’t think Congress will allow that. Congress is very supportive. It’s a bipartisan program.

But the issue of access to affordable cooling is growing and as an organization, we’ve been very supportive of that because we see that in some ways the heating problem’s been addressed. What’s not adequately addressed is the need for support for summer cooling.

MARK BRODIE: I wanted to ask you about the overall projections that your group put out. You mentioned some of the the numbers that you’re forecasting for Arizona this summer, but even just sort of within the mountain region, which is where you put Arizona, you’re looking at an almost 9% increase in the costs of of heating, and that includes, you know, places that traditionally don’t get as hot as Arizona does.

Do you see any reason to think that this trend overall of people just year after year paying more and more to heat their homes in the summer or to cool their homes in the summer is going to change anytime soon?

MARK WOLFE: No. No, I think that all the signs right now point to the costs going up. There are billions of dollars of rate increases pending across the country. Again, that’s oriented towards upgrading the grid, the delivery system. But that’s adding to cost.

And I think that we’re also seeing, the other thing that’s important to mention, that we’re also seeing that states that normally don’t think of themselves as warm-weather states are getting more days that require air conditioning.

And I think the canary in the coal mine, of course, is elderly people, disabled people, families with young children. All of those families are at more health risk when temperatures rise.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Mark, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

MARK WOLFE: Sure. Well, anytime.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

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