Topic for usea but one that were eager to have a conversation about and im hoping that this will be the first of a continuing conversation because the matters that were going to address this afternoon are taking on a degree of urgency. Theyve always been urgent, but i think, myself, that the urgency is growing. So thank all of you for coming. We have an excellent set of panelists here today for our discussion. We hope to have audience participation as well. Moderating todays session is mark wolfe. Mark will provide a discussion and will moderate the discussion on the need for Energy Assistance. He is an economist and is an expert on local and Regional Energy and housing financing. He has consulted regularly for federal, state foundation and nonprofit agencies. He is very experienced at testifying before congress, and he is the executive director of the National Energy assistance Directors Association. And the Energy Program consortium and is the Founding Partner of project energy savers. So again, thank you all for coming, and ill turn it over to mark. Mark . Thank you, barry. First, i would like to thank the United StatesEnergy Association for hosting todays session. This is a very important topic. Energy poverty in the United States, its also a global issue. Id first like to thank Barry Worthington and his staff, kimberly grove r for working wih us to put this together. What is Energy Poverty . Simply put, its when a family cant afford to pay their home energy bill. They face difficult and daily choices paying for food, medicine and other essentials in order to pay for their energy bill. Before i talk broadly about Energy Poverty, though, i would like to introduce todays panelists. These are experts in the field who have worked across areas both from associations, corporate associations as well as for state government. Before that, id like to say just a word about the National Energy assistance Directors Association or neada. We represent liheap, the National Program that helps provide block grants to help lowincome families pay their Home Energy Bills. Our first speaker will be haly laasmemcquilkin. She serves as the northeast Regional Representative on the board of trustees for the National Energy assistance Directors Association. Haly works in the Delaware Department of health and Human Services and the office of community services. And the Delaware Energy and is also the delaware Energy Assistance director. She contributed to the 2018 edition of the sphere handbook which is one of the most widely known internationally recognized sets of common principles and universal minimum standards in humanitarian response. After haly, chris mele will speak. He began his career with the United States senate for Arlen Specter and worked for Vice President george bush and then president bush. Since 1998, chris has worked for the National Association of regulatory commissioners, and is the legislative director for energy where hes responsible for the legislative advocacy, regarding energy and transportation issues in washington, d. C. Nina moussavi works for the american gas association. She has told me shes passionate about advocacy and policy and is currently legislative analyst for aga, or the american gas association. She represents more than 200 National Gas Companies across the United States. Jessica franks will be the following speaker. Shes director of Government Relations for the Edison Electric institute or eei. The trade association for investorowned electric power companies. Jessica covers appropriations, education, workforce issues for eei. Before that, she was a Government Affairs representative at halliburton and worked for speaker john boner and speaker paul ryan. Our last speaker, is kenley farmer. The associate director for the affordability and Energy Efficiency division for the district of columbia. Kenley is responsible for the management of the districts property accessed clean manager program, the Weatherization Assistance Program and lowincome home Energy Assistance program. So we have a terrific panel, and but the intent is to provide you with a perspective on Energy Poverty in the United States and how its being addressed not just through one program but through a partnership of states, utilities and local governments all working together to help lowincome families pay their Home Energy Bills. So a couple things when youre thinking about Energy Affordability and Energy Poverty, what does it really mean . Is it just some broad topic . And we hear a lot about poverty in the United States. Affordability. But what specific do we mean by Energy Poverty . For lower income family, its about 10 of income is what their energy bill represents. Almost four times the rate for nonlowincome household. So that gives you perspective. The main point is that energy, because its a base need like food, like clothing, it doesnt rise proportionately with income. So a middle income family is paying maybe a little more for energy than a lowincome family because they have a bigger house. At the end of the day its close. A middle income family may earn twice as much as a lowincome family, the energy bill isnt twice the rate of a lowincome family. Theyll pay about 2. 4 of their income for energy, it primarily reflects they just have more income. The other thing to keep in mind about this that i think makes this very interesting is that energy bills peak. They peak in the summer and winter months. So if ill say that or well say statistics show 10 of a familys income goes for home energy for lowincome family, during the winter month and summer months, that can be 20 to 25 of their income. You can see how quickly this becomes unaffordable and an extreme burden on families. According to the u. S. Energy information administration, the average cost of home heating this winter was about 1,000. Like any other thing, these are averages. For families using propane delivered fuels, the cost is about 1600. For heating oil about 1500. An enormous burden when you think of a family maybe earning 25,000 a year. Electricity was 1174 but natural gas 584 reflecting much cheaper cost due to fracking and the overall growth in natural gas supplies. Lowincome families face agonizing choices every day when they have to buy energy. We surveyed families receiving Energy Assistance under the low income home Energy Assistance program last winter and what we found, while not surprising, reflects just how tight their budgets are. When energy price goes up because of a variety of factors, for lowincome family, they dont really have much choice to substitute. They cant go from saying, look, we wont go out to dinner and say well pay our gas bill. Middle income families can make those choices. Energy for them is just more affordable for that reason. What families told us was striking. 37 had closed off part of their home to save utility costs. 25 said they kept the temperature at a level they felt was unsafe. 17 have moved out of their house. They couldnt afford to pay the energy bill that winter. 36 went without food for at least a day. And for those families, its probably because they had to pay the heating oil bill. For natural gas and electricity, there are rules in place in terms of shutoff provision so its not quite as dire. For those using heating oil or propane, the bill has to be paid when the oil dealer comes. 41 went without medical or dental care and 31 said they didnt fill a prescription. So again these arent surprising, but these are families making tough choices when they have to pay their energy bill. And the last point id like to make about affordable thats become increasing lly concernin with the aging of our society. As people move out of in the hospital for a shortterm period, they come home and they need often equipment that needs to be plugged into the wall. They have to have access to Affordable Energy. 52 of the people who get Energy Assistance told us they have a disabled member in their family, many of who rely on electricity for breathing machines or refrigerated medicine so they have to have access to Affordable Energy. Its a life or death situation for them. Not only is Energy Expensive but the cost of home heating and cooling depends on factors outside of a familys control. So maybe a family should save up for the winter, but you cant do that when you dont know how cold its going to be because thats going to drive the cost of energy for you. You cant control pricing. You could have a peak in the economy and industrial demand will help drive up the price of energy. Or geopolitical factors. Issues in iraq or iran or venezuela that drive up the price of oil. So all of those things make it very difficult for family to plan for their energy costs. And the last thing id like to talk about is the lowincome home Energy Assistance program which in some ways is maybe the first thing i should be talking about. Thats the main federal program that helps families pay their Home Energy Bills. Its a Block Grant Program providing grants estates which are then usually redistributed to local agencies to help sign up people to give them grants to help pay their Home Energy Bills during the winter and cooling bill in the summer. The program is not adequately funded at all. We received 3. 6 billion last year. That sounds like a lot of money, but close to 28 of the u. S. Population is eligible. Its classified as low income. We can only reach about 20 , 1 out of 5, of the eligible population. Thats how thats the limit of what you can do with 3. 6 billion. So what the states have done is target the funds and the neediest of the needy families. About 80 of the families that receive Energy Assistance have a Family Member either disabled, elderly or have a young child under the age of 6. That really kind of reflects the limitations of the funding we have. Congress added 150 million in the house for liheap for next year. Now that may not sound like a lot. We can use 150 million to serve another 500,000 families. So thats really the situation. We have a program. Its not adequately funded, but it does reach a lot of families. It does make a difference. Id like to just give you a few examples of how liheap helps families. In california, again, maybe to give you more of a context. Its not just a bunch of numbers. California, a young mother of three lived in an older allelectric home and had electricity shut off due to past due bill of about 800. She worked full time making minimum wage and her husband a seasonal laborer. A very poor family. No electricity, the family could not heat their home, access hot water or operate appliances. The Liheap Program in california was able to assist the family by both paying their past due bill to get electricity turned on. They also referred her to the countys Weatherization Program to help increase the efficiency of her home to reduce her bill going forward. Another example, in connecticut, a single mother of two facing the challenges of being homeless. Came into the state for help because if you dont pay your energy bill, you can lose your apartment, your lease. Through the connecticut connected services she received a housing subsidy and 500 in liheap funds which allowed her to become current on her energy bill. Now 500 doesnt sound like a lot of money, but if you dont have any resources and youre facing eviction, that can make the difference between staying in your home and being evicted. And one last example i can give in colorado, a mother of three raising her children on her own because her husband had a stroke and was confined to a care facility. Her car was repossessed so she no longer was able to report to work. She received a shutoff notice for heat and could not allow her children to suffer in the cold. She reached out to the state Liheap Program and received assistance that allowed her to turn her energy back on. Again, these dont solve the problems of poverty but allows families to continue and stay safe. With that, id like to turn it over to haly, our next speaker. And one thing id like to do is have our speakers provide their talks and then open up to questions. Thank you. Hi. I guess mark really said everything that was no thank you. Mark said everything that was very, very important and most of it, what i would have wanted to say also, so, however, i would like to bring to attention some things here. For example, a couple years, how actually this entire journey started was a couple years ago, when i started to shift my research more towards Energy Access, i noticed that all the quantitative indicators diverged greatly from the empirical experiences. Global reports might note that developed countries have 100 Energy Access. While the people on the field and energy vendors, researchers and everybody else was conveying to us at the state level totally different story. We had thousands of disconnections, numerous and even in United States, people use candles and lanterns for evening activities. They use various unsafe Energy Sources for cooking and heating. They dont have sufficient capabilities for sanitation or personal hygiene because the electricity has been disconnected. They have moldy dwellings, and their thermal regimes of the household are often below World Health Organization recommended thermal standards of minimum of 65 degrees in fahrenheit or maximum over 86 in fahrenheit. So the question started, why dont these reports reflect so poorly what is actually happening on the field . And the reason is because Energy System is extremely complex system. And the issues with the reports, they try to minimize all those indicators down into very simple ways to look at the world. And energy meanwhile, even though energy is a hybrid system. So energy actually does support, and it is important because energy supports all the provisions of basic needs. For example, it supports all the cooking, lighting, heating, cooling, sanitation, medical care, accessing information and communication services. And in some reason in our society, it has become an implicit expectation that energy exists out there somehow magically and we really dont have to worry about, even though its a huge support from infrastructure. So and United States maybe we havent done as Much Research as European Countries have done it. And, for example, Englands NationalHealth Service department of health and social care and other nongovernmental agencies have estimated that cold homes cost england alone around 850 million to 1. 3 billion pounds annually, which is a huge cost on a society. And that does not even count the economic costs like lost production and lost productivity from people who stay home and sick. So what are the questions that i think we sometimes dont think about it. For example, as a community, we need to discuss what does Energy Access truly mean to us . Does it mean that everybody who needs Energy Services, irrelevant of the cost, can access them . Or does it mean that everybody who needs energy can afford reliable, sustainable and modern energy . Do our Energy Strategies include all the aspects of Energy Access, availability, affordability, reliability and sustainability . Or do our strategies developed were developed without realizing that were overlooking some of those important aspects because we dont share our objectives with other stakeholders. For example, when we are developing Energy Efficiency programs, do we consider their affordability equally across the population . Do we include scenarios of Human Behavior into our Energy Efficie