Energy affordability starts long before the bill arrives
For customers, energy affordability is about more than what they pay each month. It affects residents’ ability to keep their homes comfortable, manage household costs, and plan for the future. For commercial and industrial customers, energy costs can affect operating costs, investment decisions, and competitiveness. In both cases, those outcomes are shaped upstream through decisions about investment, financing, cost allocation, funding, and program design. Each of those choices requires stakeholders to weigh affordability, reliability, resilience, and economic growth.
The energy affordability challenge has changed
Historically, energy affordability concerns were most visible among households under the greatest financial strain. Today, aging infrastructure, surging demand from data centers, electrification, and broader economic pressures are impacting a wider range of customers, from households that have never needed assistance to small businesses and manufacturers. That same growth in demand can bring significant economic opportunity, but it also requires investments that influence energy affordability outcomes.
As energy affordability has moved to the center of industry conversations, several definitions and measures have been adopted. Some approaches focus primarily on energy burden or bill impacts; others consider whether customers can access the energy services they need.
Energy affordability is a system outcome, not the product of any single decision. While it is most visible in the customer bill, that bill reflects the total cost of serving customers, how efficiently the energy system is used, how investments are timed and financed, how costs are allocated, and whether customers can access tools that help them manage energy use and bills. No single organization or entity controls affordability. Instead, decisions across the energy system collectively shape what customers ultimately pay and experience.
Affordability by the numbers
67%
50%
75%
Customer reality
The same bill can land very differently from one customer to the next. Income, housing conditions, business circumstances, energy needs, and perceived cost predictability and stability all shape the way that bill is experienced.
ICF research shows just how wide that range is, from households comfortably managing costs to customers facing significant financial strain. Many fall somewhere in between, making tradeoffs to absorb rising costs, while remaining ineligible for traditional assistance programs.
These differences matter. One-size-fits-all programs, messaging, and support strategies often miss the needs of specific customer groups. Understanding energy affordability through the customer lens can help organizations design more effective programs, target solutions more efficiently so support goes where it can have the greatest impact, and communicate in ways that resonate across the full range of customers.
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