In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans lost their jobs as the economy ground to a near halt. Unemployment rose to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Shortly afterwards states around the country passed emergency laws to protect the most vulnerable people. In 32 states, governors and public utility commissions (PUCs) passed utility shut-off moratoriums to ensure that no households lost their electricity because they couldn’t pay their bill.
Six months later many of those moratoriums have expired or are set to expire in the next month. Between May and mid-August, 10 states allowed their moratoriums to expire. In the next month another 14 state moratoriums will expire. That means by October 1st a total of 36 states won’t have moratoriums in place.
In order to understand the impact of these policy changes, Carbon Switch analyzed data provided by public utility commissions in these states, unemployment data, and energy spending data. Our goal was to understand how many people could be at risk of losing their electricity this year.
Vladimir_Putine on August 28th, 2020 at 18:24 UTC »
This is how you make riots and protestors. Bored angry masses
train4Half on August 28th, 2020 at 17:52 UTC »
I would not want to be without power (and air conditioning) in TX or FL in September
wrldruler21 on August 28th, 2020 at 17:43 UTC »
Splitting hairs on statistics here. The governor of my state (MD) has to renew the moratorium every 30 days... So it always appears it will soon expire. Not sure how many other states do the same.