Alison Kenner, Drexel University
James Adams, University of California, Irvine
Morgan Sarao, Energy Outreach Colorado
Asked to imagine the role of alternative energy suppliers (AES) in today’s energy markets, many people are excited to learn that there are broader options; that in deregulated states it is possible to choose who you buy energy from, and where it is sourced. This is particularly appealing for energy users who feel that utility companies operate as monopolies and that, as ratepayers, they have little say in energy system decision-making. On the ground, however, AES may create harm if their business practices are not attentive to the conditions and needs of energy vulnerable households.
With growing efforts to decarbonize U.S. energy systems, it remains to be seen how energy vulnerable households are impacted by transitions that are taking place across multiple scales. Day and Walker define energy vulnerability as the “circumstances and processes through which problems of access to sufficient and affordable energy are manifest” (2016). While significant research has looked at the relationships between energy markets and poverty in the Global
South, much less attention has been given to this relationship in the United States.
This paper is based on a three-year ethnographic study of energy vulnerability in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, including the systems that are designed to mitigate related harms. Interviews were conducted with 339 energy users from distinct households (n=237 structured and n=102 open-ended) between May 2020 and September 2021. We also conducted participant observation at more than two dozen community workshops and dozens of professional meetings held locally, regionally, and in national arenas. While our project’s focus was directed at energy assistance programs (LIHEAP, WAP, and utility-based debt programs), our data inevitably showed how energy markets are situated within broader energy ecologies that include and impact vulnerable households through disjunctive policies.
Based on the experiences of our respondent pool, Philadelphia’s energy customers have had overwhelmingly negative experiences with AES. Negative experiences stem from interactions during door-to-door sales, and the harmful impacts of switching utility companies; these harmful impacts include paying significantly more for energy services or receiving variable bills; losing the ability to use utility assistance grants; and facing thousands of dollars of debt owed to utility companies. Much like the microlending schemes Elyachar analyzed in Cairo (2005), the alternative energy suppliers’ rhetoric of market empowerment, which turns on choice and competition, masks the way these contracts dispossess customers of the non-market forms of protection and assistance they had before. Energy customers who switched to AES, and suffered harm, translated their experiences into cautionary tales, which now circulate in Philadelphia’s communities. The resulting message, found circulating in the communities we studied, is that alternatives to conventional energy supply are nothing more than a scam.
The harm experienced and resulting cautionary tales have shaped the space of discourse for renewable energy, forcing many transition advocates to begin conversation in low-income communities by explaining how energy markets work and why AES does not serve energy vulnerable households in the system as currently configured.
