Abstract
Islands and remote rural communities throughout the USA pay some of the highest costs for electricity and heating fuel in the nation. For areas with such high energy costs, the benefits of energy efficiency can be significant but rural residents face several geographic, financial, and awareness barriers that make it difficult to invest in home energy upgrades. These barriers combine to create a market failure that we call the “rural energy efficiency gap.” The existence of the rural efficiency gap is supported by data collected from Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont which indicate that the “energy burden,” or percentage of household income spent on energy bills, is 33% higher in rural areas and that participation in residential energy efficiency financing and rebate programs can be significantly lower. The combination of higher energy burdens and greater barriers to participation can lead to inequitable distribution of available resources for energy efficiency, meaning that those who could benefit most from efficiency upgrades are often least able to access them. This work is designed to be a resource for energy efficiency program administrators but may also be of interest to energy efficiency program implementers, policymakers, and regulators. It provides data about the rural energy efficiency gap and identifies barriers to energy efficiency in rural communities. It also highlights strategies that are helping to bridge the gap by making it easier for residents in cold climate, petroleum-dependent states—those with high thermal energy burdens—to increase comfort and safety in their homes while also reducing energy bills. The barriers to rural energy efficiency identified in this paper have been grouped into three categories: geographic barriers, financial barriers, and awareness and access barriers. There are many differences between rural areas across the country, e.g., demographics, utility model and rate structures, energy sources, and consumption patterns. This paper is not intended to suggest that the strategies documented here will necessarily be applicable to all rural areas in the USA
Highlights
The Bridging the Rural Efficiency Gap Project was a two-year project initiated by the Maine Governor’s Energy Office1 in which our sub-awarded team researched the barriers to residential energy efficiency in four participating rural states—Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—and identified approaches to increase participation in energy efficiency programs that we refer to as Bbridging strategies.^ Even though Maine’s energy burden is one of the highest in the country, we observed a host of factors that were limiting investment in efficiency upgrades in rural areas of the state
This paper was designed to be a resource for those best positioned to increase access to energy efficiency in rural areas, stakeholders we refer to as Bprogram administrators^ and Bprogram implementers.^ Program administrators respond to policy mandates with the design and coordination of energy efficiency programs and are most often housed within a state agency, utility, or statewide efficiency trust
Despite these differing definitions of rural and remote, we found that Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont share similar barriers to participation in energy efficiency and there is much that each state can learn from the others
Summary
The Bridging the Rural Efficiency Gap Project was a two-year project initiated by the Maine Governor’s Energy Office in which our sub-awarded team researched the barriers to residential energy efficiency in four participating rural states—Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—and identified approaches to increase participation in energy efficiency programs that we refer to as Bbridging strategies.^ Even though Maine’s energy burden (the percentage of annual household income that goes toward energy bills) is one of the highest in the country, we observed a host of factors that were limiting investment in efficiency upgrades in rural areas of the state. When referring to Bremote^ communities, we mean those that are either only accessible by plane or boat at least some of the year or those that are otherwise geographically isolated from population centers (e.g., communities in northern New Hampshire separated from the rest of the state by the White Mountains) Despite these differing definitions of rural and remote, we found that Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont share similar barriers to participation in energy efficiency and there is much that each state can learn from the others. The existence of the rural efficiency gap is further supported by data collected from each state indicating that participation rates in energy efficiency financing and rebate programs can be lower
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