Short and Long-Term Perspectives: The Impact on Low-Income Consumers of Forecasted Energy Price Increases in 2008 and A Cap & Trade Carbon Policy in 2030

Abstract

The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released its short-term forecast for residential energy prices for the winter of 2007-2008. The forecast indicates increases in costs for low-income consumers in the year ahead, particularly for those using fuel oil to heat their homes. In the following analysis, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has integrated the EIA price projections with the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) for 2001 in order to project the impact of these price increases on the nation's low-income households by primary heating fuel type, nationally and by Census Region. The report provides an update of bill estimates provided in a previous study, "The Impact Of Forecasted Energy Price Increases On Low-Income Consumers" (Eisenberg, 2005). The statistics are intended for use by policymakers in the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program and elsewhere who are trying to gauge the nature and severity of the problems that will be faced by eligible low-income households during the 2008 fiscal year. In addition to providing expenditure forecasts for the year immediately ahead, this analysis uses a similar methodology to give policy makers some insight into one of the major policy debates that will impact low-income energy expenditures well into the middle decades of this century and beyond. There is now considerable discussion of employing a cap-and-trade mechanism to first limit and then reduce U.S. emissions of carbon into the atmosphere in order to combat the long-range threat of human-induced climate change. The Energy Information Administration has provided an analysis of projected energy prices in the years 2020 and 2030 for one such cap-and-trade carbon reduction proposal that, when integrated with the RECS 2001 database, provides estimates of how low-income households will be impacted over the long term by such a carbon reduction policy.