The cost of a comfortable home: U.S. energy insecurity

Key findings

• 32.9% of U.S. households experienced at least one form of energy insecurity measured in the 2024 RECS, an estimated 43.56 million households. Source

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• 47.8% of renter households reported energy insecurity, compared with 25.7% of owner-occupying households. Source

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• 24.8% of households reduced or went without basic necessities, such as food or medicine, to pay an energy bill. Source

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When the bill changes how you live

Energy insecurity describes experiences, rather than one universal bill threshold. The survey asks about cutting back on necessities, keeping a home at an unsafe or unhealthy temperature, notices about supply, and being unable to use heating or cooling equipment.

These experiences can occur together. A notice is not a completed disconnection. The temperature question means keeping the home at a temperature the respondent felt was unsafe or unhealthy; it does not mean moving out of the home.

Nearly half of renter households

The estimated share was 47.8% among renters and 25.7% among owners. Each percentage uses its own tenure group as the denominator, so this is a comparison of prevalence rather than the number of homes in each group.

The gap is descriptive. Income, building condition, location and other circumstances differ between households; these figures cannot tell us how much of the difference renting itself explains.

Source: EIA, 2024 RECS, preliminary HC11.1. The Room Study percentages from published rounded counts. Rented includes occupancy without rent. Method and limits

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Start with a year, not the worst month

For your own home, a full year of bills gives a more useful starting point than one winter or summer payment. Keep the period consistent with your income, and separate home energy from unrelated utilities. A lower monthly payment on a budget plan may spread the cost without reducing annual use.

The calculator below describes the share of income going on energy. It does not reproduce the survey result or decide whether your home is comfortable. Two households spending the same share can have very different temperatures, equipment and needs.

Useful routes when comfort is out of reach

If the bill is the immediate problem, the official USAGov energy-assistance page links to state LIHEAP offices and crisis support. Weatherisation assistance addresses eligible home improvements; application rules and available help vary by location. Renters can also ask their landlord about equipment or building defects rather than assuming every comfort problem is theirs to solve.

A new throw or curtain can change how a room feels. It is not a substitute for working equipment, an affordable bill or the repairs a building needs. We do not attach a promised energy saving to a decorative purchase.

Methodology & sources

We divide each published affected-household count by the matching total, then multiply by 100: 43.56 ÷ 132.54 × 100 = 32.9% nationally; 20.55 ÷ 43.00 × 100 = 47.8% for renters; 23.01 ÷ 89.54 × 100 = 25.7% for owners. Inputs are already rounded to hundredths of a million, so extra decimal places would imply unsupported precision.

This preliminary release reports 2024 RECS household characteristics collected from October 2024 to April 2025. Hardship questions concern the previous 12 months at interview, not a uniform calendar-year diary. Equipment questions include unaffordable repairs or energy-supply disruption caused by non-payment. Categories overlap and must not be added.

Question SCALEG resolves the table’s abbreviated temperature label: respondents were asked about keeping the home at a temperature they felt was unsafe or unhealthy. This item does not ask why. These are reported experiences, not measured indoor temperatures or a clinical assessment. The necessities question gives food and medicine as examples, rather than restricting the response to those two expenses.

Estimates have sampling and non-sampling uncertainty. HC11.1 supplies relative standard errors for published counts; we have not constructed confidence intervals for these ratios or tested the renter–owner difference. The chart is descriptive.

The private calculator uses annual home energy spending ÷ annual household income before tax × 100. Monthly equivalent is annual spending ÷ 12. It accepts a zero energy bill and positive income, retains no entered data and applies no hardship cut-off.

We review these resources when the underlying releases change. A review date does not make a figure expire: its measurement period stays visible until a checked revision replaces it.