Please join us for a free webinar “Building a Better Understanding of Texas Low-Income Communities and Energy” hosted by the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute (TEPRI) on Friday, August 23rd at 11am CST. RMC’s Dr. Heath Prince is one of the four featured speakers, and the webinar focuses on the results the Texas Low-Income Community Profile Series first installment, The Texas Overview (details below). Heath’s Policy Research Project class at the LBJ School of Public Affairs contributed to the research for TEPRI’s project. You can register here.
Details:
Understanding dynamics at the intersection of poverty and energy affordability is critical to designing strategies to effectively develop lasting energy solutions for low-income communities. In this webinar, we will discuss the interplay between energy poverty and economic hardship, demographic traits, quality of life, energy behaviors, housing type, and household composition. Our speakers will present the results of the Texas Low-Income Community Profile Series first installment, The Texas Overview. The objective of this series is for data and insights to be utilized by members and stakeholders to increase effectiveness of low-income energy programs and reduce barriers to outreach and education.
Key discussion items:
- Owner-occupied households are a meaningful energy poverty reduction target
- Low-income customers are engaged with energy, just not with programs
- Low-income Texans make difficult trade-offs to balance the disproportionate amount that they spend on energy
- Energy burden is a useful metric, but not a sufficient signal of energy poverty
Featured Speakers:
John Hall, Director of the Texas Energy Program at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); Dana Harmon, Executive Director of TEPRI; Jacqui Moss, Research Fellow at TEPRI and the lead author on the Texas Overview Report; and Heath Prince, Director and Research Scientist at RMC.
To view the report being discussed during the webinar, go here. You can also view the PRP class report here.
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