The United States recorded 13.4 million residential electricity disconnections in 2024, according to the first national report of its kind published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration last week. The figures, which also captured 1.7 million natural gas disconnections, surpassed what researchers had previously projected and laid bare the extent of energy poverty across American households.
The data was collected under a mandate from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which directed the EIA to conduct a monthly survey of utility providers following decades of campaigning by consumer advocates who said the absence of national figures made it impossible to understand the true scale of the problem. “We know the ramifications of loss of service,” said John Howat, an energy analyst at the National Consumer Law Center. “People maintain unhealthy indoor temperatures and they forgo other necessities.”
Southern States Carry a Disproportionate Share of Disconnections
The EIA report found that disconnections were most concentrated in the South, with Oklahoma recording the highest rate, roughly three shutoffs for every ten customers. Texas, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas followed. Together, these states accounted for a substantial share of the national total of nearly 13.5 million electricity disconnections recorded across all 12 months of 2024.
Jean Su, a researcher at the Centre for Biological Diversity who had previously estimated a national total of around nine million electricity shutoffs based on data available from states with public reporting requirements, described the real figure as far worse than anticipated. “The rate of shutoffs in those states are particularly egregious, much worse than the rest of the country,” she said. Experts attributed the pattern to a combination of high poverty rates, recent increases in energy costs, extended summer heat requiring heavy air conditioning use, and comparatively weak consumer protections against disconnection.
October saw the highest single-month total, with 1.5 million electricity disconnections, a figure the EIA linked to the expiry of warm-weather moratoriums that prevent utilities from cutting service during the hottest months in several states. In states without such seasonal restrictions, disconnections were often highest during the summer itself.
Scale of Financial Distress Reflected in Final Notice Figures
Beyond the disconnection numbers, the report documented the broader financial precarity facing American households. Utility companies sent approximately 94.9 million final notices (warnings issued before a disconnection is carried out) to residential electricity customers in 2024, and 27.1 million to natural gas customers. An individual account may receive more than one such notice in a given year, but the cumulative figure nonetheless points to widespread difficulty meeting energy bills across the country’s 143 million electricity-connected households.
Jonathan Kim, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, noted that the findings arrived at a moment of increasing pressure on household energy budgets. “The numbers are big and they are bigger than even we expected them to be,” he said. The report’s publication coincided with a proposal from the Trump administration to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Programme, a four billion dollar federal scheme that helps lower-income Americans pay their fuel bills, a move Congress has so far declined to adopt.
