Darlene Jones spends most of her time holed up in the bedroom to minimize the amount of electricity she uses to cool and light her home in downtown New Orleans. Air seeps out from the doors and windows of the 1890 one-bedroom shotgun house – and through the bashed-up floorboards and ceiling that Jones cannot afford to repair. She has wrapped foam around the leaky air-conditioning pipes, and taped handwritten signs on the front door above the metal letterbox that read “Please close the slot”.
“I don’t want to lose the little cool air there is,” said Jones, 68, a former college administrator who was left unable to work after a violent carjacking. “Climate change is for real but the utility is robbing us blind.”
Jones’s electricity bill more than tripled this summer – despite scrimping on fans and air conditioning during record heat and humidity levels – and she was unable to make two consecutive payments. Her church paid off the $450 debt – 24 hours before the utility was due to disconnect the power.
Energy bills in New Orleans are rising at the fastest rate in almost two decades, and outpacing increases in the rest of the country.
Despite living in one of America’s most climate-vulnerable and poorest cities, it is still almost impossible for low-income residents such as Jones to reduce their “carbon footprint”. It’s not easy making green choices when public transit options are limited, and where tax incentives for solar panels and electric vehicles have largely excluded low-income households.
“I would love to get my house weatherized. I’d consider an EV if it was affordable – or even giving up my car. But the public transit here is draconian,” said Jones, a volunteer community activist. “Tax rebates don’t help me, because I don’t file taxes. They make it so hard to do the right thing.”
Climate scientists are clear that the world must transition away from fossil fuels immediately if it has any chance of avoiding the most catastrophic climate effects.
In recent years, the fossil-fuel industry and its allies have pushed the notion that personal choices are to blame for the climate crisis, while at the same time lobbying for policies to ensure their products – and profits – continue to expand.
Americans in every income category have bigger carbon footprints than their counterparts in almost all other G20 nations, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data shared with the Guardian. But carbon inequality in the US is a complex situation which for many people – particularly those on a low income – has little to do with personal choice.
New Orleans has lots of old, leaky homes – especially in low-income neighbourhoods where mostly people of color live. The city’s energy-efficiency scheme is run by the city’s utility company Entergy New Orleans – a monopoly with a track record in blocking the transition to renewable energy sources that would lower bills and greenhouse gas emissions. Entergy’s 12th and most recent report showed it continues to substantially underperform.
“There has been very little benefit for low-income households, in large part due to the lack of outreach by Entergy, which benefits from higher energy use – and a lack of accountability,” said Jesse George, the New Orleans policy director at the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a non-profit watchdog.
Last winter, one in five households had overdue bills and were at risk of disconnection, according to figures Entergy provided to city council.
A company spokesperson said recent hikes were down to the war in Ukraine pushing up gas prices and the summer heatwave, but prices remain “12% below the national average”.
“The cost of these programs is directly recovered from customers, and the council balances the cost and benefits of these programs. Ultimately, the council determines how much funding is prioritized to energy efficiency,” the spokesperson added.
New Orleans is among only two cities to regulate their own utilities – the other is Washington DC. Every other place depends on state regulators to decide on rate hikes, infrastructure upgrades and what sources of energy power the grid.
In 2018, Entergy hired actors to lobby city hall in favour of a methane-fired power plant in a majority Black and Vietnamese neighborhood, claiming that the polluting infrastructure was necessary to avoid major outages during storms or other disasters – a frequent occurrence in New Orleans. The utility was fined $5m for its fake protesters, but the plant was still given the green light by the city council. In 2021, Hurricane Ida caused a citywide blackout, leaving residents sweltering and in the dark. The methane plant wasn’t damaged, but sat idle for almost 48 hours; some residents went without power for 10 days.
Renewables account for less than 4% of Entergy New Orleans’ energy portfolio, whereas nationwide about 21% of electricity generation comes from wind, solar, hydropower and other renewables.
Also in 2018, the city created a community solar program to expand sustainable energy options for renters and other residents who couldn’t install solar panels at home. The subscription-based service was meant to help residents reduce bills – and cut emissions by reducing reliance on Entergy’s grid, which is dominated by fracked gas and nuclear power. Entergy successfully lobbied against retail markets rates, which made community solar economically nonviable for developers. Five years on, not a single project exists.
Amid growing public anger about rising bills and frequent outages, community organizers last month persuaded the city council to rewrite the community solar rules.
“The council has finally seen the seriousness of the climate crisis and realize they have to do things differently, but so far Entergy has been an impediment,” said George of the Alliance for Affordable Energy. “A locally regulated utility could be a huge boost for climate action, as we can pass policies that would never pass at the state level.”
Entergy Corp, the parent company, reported $1.4bn in earnings last year and is the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in New Orleans. In the past decade, Entergy spent at least $25m lobbying federal lawmakers, in addition to more than $2m in campaign contributions to both Republicans and Democrats, according to Open Secrets.
About a fifth of Entergy New Orleans’ power comes from an old nuclear plant in Mississippi, which a spokesperson said already makes its generation fleet “among the cleanest in the US … Entergy has made a commitment to reducing carbon emissions from our operations to net-zero by 2050”.
“Customers do not fund lobbying expenditures,” the spokesperson said.
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New Orleans is on the frontlines of the climate emergency, as dramatic sea level rise exacerbates the risk of flooding in the low-lying hurricane-prone city – in addition to soaring temperatures, severe drought and super fog events from surrounding marsh fires that caused misery in 2023.
Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many New Orleanians have strived to create a more equitable, sustainable and resilient city, with thousands of families investing in energy efficiency and solar to reduce energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.
Harry Lowenburg, an upper-middle-class retired community organizer who lives uptown in a well-insulated three bedroom detached house, is committed to reducing his “carbon footprint”.
About 12 years ago, Lowenburg took advantage of generous state and federal tax rebates to install solar panels, adding back-up batteries on his own dime. New Orleans has a favorable net metering rate which means residential solar users are credited at the full retail market rate for excess electricity returned to the grid.
After the batteries conked out earlier this year, Lowenburg’s electricity bill jumped and in August cost $351 – 80% higher than the same period last year. He has since increased the number of panels and batteries that will help charge his new Tesla SUV – which replaced the smaller electric vehicle that he bought in 2018, that earned him a decent tax credit.
“I do more because I can afford to do more, but there needs to be incentives for everyone, not just people with a higher income,” said Lowenburg, 68.
Louisiana residents have the nation’s highest per-capita electricity consumption, with almost seven in 10 households relying on electric heating – and almost everyone has air conditioning, according to the EIA.
Still, Louisiana’s Republican legislature canceled the state’s solar energy tax incentives in 2018. The state is also yet to apply for a $212m ring-fenced pot of federal money – released by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act – to help low- and middle-income households upgrade to more energy efficient appliances like stoves, heat pumps and air conditioners.
On face value, Lowenburg’s carbon footprint appears much smaller than Jones’s but according to a recent study, the richest 10% of US households are responsible for 40% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions – partly because of investments linked to the fossil fuel industry.
Overall, the richest 10% of Americans have a carbon footprint 16 times bigger than the poorest 10%, according to the IEA data shared with the Guardian. The biggest factor is that wealthy Americans travel far more than the poorest, contributing almost 25 times more emissions from road transport.
But it’s a complex picture with America’s poor and rapidly declining public transit services and sprawling city landscapes: 73% of workers commute by car and 100 million Americans – including many low- and middle-income people – are paying off a car loan. There are around 275m cars on the road in the US (compared with 332 million people), and auto loan debt currently stands at $1.5tn – a record high, according to the federal reserve bank of New York.
And advocates point out that good or bad consumer choices aren’t the main problem here. Louisiana is home to about 1% of the US population, yet emits more than 4% of its greenhouse gases – which is predominantly down to its heavy industrial sector. More than half of the state’s greenhouse gas footprint comes from the heavily industrialized sliver of the Mississippi River that stretches from Baton Rouge to just south of New Orleans, according to one analysis.
“We residents are not the main polluters,” said Abel Thompson, an organizer with Together New Orleans (TNO), a network of interfaith and non-profit institutions pushing to transform the city’s electric grid. “Even if we all started riding bikes today, it wouldn’t make a difference in Louisiana.”
In 2021, amid mounting public pressure, New Orleans approved the first Renewable and Clean Portfolio Standard in the Gulf south – joining 36 states (not Louisiana) and Washington DC in mandating the phase-out of fossil fuels and transition to lower cost renewables. The policy requires Entergy to entirely eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2050, and prioritizes local solar generation which should help stimulate the market. It allows nuclear and offsets, which environmental activists had campaigned against.
It’s this sort of transformative political action that could help New Orleanians collectively and permanently reduce their carbon footprint. But, Louisiana’s new climate action plan does not mandate a green transition. Instead, state lawmakers are pushing to expand LNG and other polluting infrastructure which, if built, could increase Louisiana’s emissions by 70% to 243 metric tons by 2026.
Broderick Bagert, another TNO organizer, said: “The LNG expansion in Louisiana feels like a juggernaut that’s impossible to stop, given how deeply embedded the fossil fuel industry is in the state’s power and politics. But challenging the utility has not been done before, it’s the biggest low-hanging fruit, and for now that’s our focus.”
