Turn up the heat! Contesting energy poverty in Buffalo, NY

Geoforum 74 (2016) 222–232

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Turn up the heat! Contesting energy poverty in Buffalo, NY Anthony Hilbert, Marion Werner ⇑ Department of Geography, SUNY-Buffalo, 105 Wilkeson Quad, Buffalo, NY 14261, USA

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Article history: Received 29 July 2015 Received in revised form 16 June 2016 Accepted 16 June 2016 Available online 27 June 2016 Keywords: Energy poverty Urban political ecology Uneven development Energy conservation Critical environmental justice

a b s t r a c t Energy poverty – or the condition of households that cannot adequately heat their homes – is produced at the confluence of multi-scalar processes, from regional labor market restructuring, to urban disinvestment, to geopolitical and geoeconomic struggles over extraction. Critical theorization of the concept is in its nascent phase and the notion itself has received relatively little attention in the United States. Our paper aims to address these lacunae by mobilizing an urban political ecology framework to consider a community-based campaign that targeted residential energy conservation funds in Buffalo, New York. We analyze how the community campaign drew upon the ‘‘network crisis” of the energy-poor home to frame critical justice demands that foregrounded energy poverty as the product of uneven socionatural development. Through spatial claims and scalar strategies, the campaign highlighted the contribution of neoliberal conservation programs to deepening patterns of uneven development, and demanded redress of disinvestment in urban housing stock through funding of weatherization for low-income households. We argue that contests over urban energy metabolism offer a fruitful area to explore the possibilities of transforming uneven development from below. Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Energy poverty refers to the inability of households to heat living spaces adequately, leading to social exclusion, material deprivation and poor health (see Buzar, 2007b). The concept became prominent in the 1980s in the UK, where it is called fuel poverty, and more recently in the European Union, particularly in the former Eastern bloc (Boardman, 1991, 2013; Buzar, 2007a, 2007b). In the US, the issue is recognized neither colloquially nor politically as energy (or fuel) poverty. Rather, policymakers and planners, while occasionally referring to energy insecurity, generally frame the problem as ‘‘unaffordable heat” and address the issue in a scattered, piecemeal way, in contrast to the more directed policy measures adopted in the UK and more recently in continental Europe (Power, 2006; Bouzarovski et al., 2012). Low-income households in the US pay on average 10% of income on all energy bills, compared to just 3% for high-income households, and the average is considerably greater in colder regions of the country (Eisenberg, 2010). Despite these figures, and the forms of hardship that they imply, both the limited conception of, and the policy approach to, energy poverty in the US belie the socionatural relations of power that structure the problem.

⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Hilbert), [email protected] (M. Werner). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.06.009 0016-7185/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Energy poverty is generally attributed to demand side and supply side factors – low incomes and high energy prices, respectively – together with the inefficiency of housing stock. As these factors suggest, energy poverty is produced at the confluence of multi-scalar processes, from regional labor market restructuring linked to globalization, to geopolitical and geoeconomic struggles over energy extraction, to urban and regional disinvestment and decay. Despite its rich theoretical potential, theoreticallyinformed engagement with energy poverty is in its nascent stage, and the concept has received relatively little attention in the US. Our paper aims to address these lacunae by mobilizing an urban political ecology (UPE) framework to consider the spatial and scalar dynamics of a community-based campaign to redress regressive disbursement of residential energy conservation funds by a natural gas utility company. UPE offers an entry point to better understand the social relations and socionatural processes that produce energy poverty. Drawing on this literature, we consider how struggles over energy poverty in Buffalo relate to uneven development of urban environments, the politics of scale, and critical justice claims. Our study allows us to extend previous work that has sought to characterize energy poverty through the notion of assemblage, including the home conceived of as a networked space (Harrison and Popke, 2011). We show how the crisis of the networked space of the home, caused by repeated shut-offs of heat and struggles to pay energy bills, when combined with local organizing in neighborhoods that

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concentrate these shut-offs, can articulate the home within a politics of scale that contests uneven socionatural development in the city. In turn, our argument contributes to the UPE literature by offering a grounded account of the possibilities to reshape socionatural processes, demonstrating the potential contingency of urban metabolism and possibilities for change. As in many similar urban struggles, in the case of Buffalo the process of politicizing the energy-poor home and making redistributive demands was led at the grassroots by immigrant-descent and African-American women (Buckingham and Kulcur, 2009; Kurtz, 2007). The utility company and the state regulator initially dismissed these activists as representing but one neighborhood in a large service area targeted for energy conservation investment. In response, activists, with the support of engaged researchers and community allies, ‘scaled up’ their organizing to a regional campaign. Contesting the passive distribution of conservation funds across the region’s intense uneven geographies, activists and their allies effectively demonstrated the conservation program’s role in deepening these geographies. Framed in these terms, the group sought redress of disinvestment in urban housing stock through substantial, targeted funding allocations to weatherization for low-income neighborhoods. The Buffalo campaign had regional and statewide effects: the state regulator subsequently reviewed utility conservation programs across New York State and additional funding was added to the state’s low-income weatherization programs funded through on-bill surcharges. This paper draws on key informant interviews and extensive primary document analysis, including public testimony, court documents, and conservation fund data, undertaken by Hilbert.1 Based on this research and commensurate with a praxis approach, we draw upon the insights of campaign leaders in order to better understand the possibilities for community groups to shape the spatial form of the city’s energy metabolism in the face of neoliberal regulation of energy provision, including energy conservation. We proceed in four subsequent sections. In Section 2, we review the literature on energy poverty and discuss how a UPE framework can enhance our understanding of the concept. In the third section, we discuss the existing neoliberal policy framework to address the problem, narrowly defined as ‘‘unaffordable heat,” and the turn to on-bill surcharges in order to fund weatherization and appliance replacement managed by utility companies under the rubric of conservation. We introduce the Western New York version of this funding mechanism, the Conservation Incentive Program (CIP), managed by the area’s gas utility company, National Fuel Gas (henceforth, National Fuel). We turn in Section 4 to the campaign started in Buffalo’s West Side neighborhood by the community group People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH). In our fifth section, we conclude by drawing out the contributions that the UPE perspective can make to our understanding of energy poverty, and how engagement with struggles over energy poverty can in turn enrich UPE.

2. Energy poverty and urban political ecology In her classic work, Boardman initially defined energy poverty as a household that spent more than 10% of income on energy bills 1 Hilbert conducted interviews with both co-founders, member organizers, and the legal adviser of the key community group. Hilbert was unable to obtain an interview with the relevant actors at the utility. Extensive documentation of the utility’s position was available, however, via an online database maintained by the regulator, which stored all public documents related to the rate case that we discuss below (see NYSDPS-DMM Matter No. 07-00141). Hilbert coded and analyzed public statements of all actors in the campaign, transcripts of public meetings and hearings, and interview transcripts, in addition to conducting an independent analysis of conservation fund distribution. Our FOIA request for updated geographic data on fund distribution was denied by the utility.

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(1991). Scholars subsequently moved away from a narrow incomebased definition as research turned to understanding the multiple factors that contribute to energy poverty and its pernicious effects on health and well-being (Buzar, 2007b). Boardman and others have long identified poorly insulated or dilapidated housing stock as a principal cause of exorbitant household energy expenditure (Buzar, 2007b; Boardman, 2013; Healy and Clinch, 2004). An extensive literature in health has considered the effects of insufficient heating on infants, children and the elderly (Rudge and Gilchrist, 2005; Liddell and Morris, 2010), psychological health (Liddell and Morris, 2010), social wellness (Anderson et al., 2012), nutrition (Bhattacharya et al., 2003) and sedentariness and other micro-geographies of the home (Brunner et al., 2012; Petrova et al., 2013), as well as subjective experience (Waddams-Price et al., 2012). Over the past decade, energy inefficiencies linked to energy poverty have been considered as a source of emissions within the context of climate change (Ürge-Vorsatz and Herrero, 2012; Ürge-Vorsatz and Metz, 2009). Research is now well developed beyond the UK especially in Eastern and Central Europe, in contrast to the US, where comparatively little work has been done (but see Harrison and Popke, 2011; Harrison, 2013). In Europe, the pioneering work of Buzar (2007a, 2007b) has been further developed by Bouzarovski et al. (2015) and Herrero and Ürge-Vorsatz (2012). Bouzarovski et al. (2012) have assessed EU-wide energy poverty regulation. There is also a growing literature that seeks to connect these debates across North-South and West-East divides (e.g., Groh, 2014; Sagar, 2005; Sovacool, 2012). This expanded scope has occasioned further efforts to redefine energy poverty. Day and Walker (2013) and Bouzarovski and Petrova (2015) have proposed the term ‘energy vulnerability’ to enable a more open definition that does not presume the energy service at issue in any particular context (e.g., heat, light, cooking, cooling, and mobility). We are sensitive to this proposal; in using ‘energy poverty’ here, we acknowledge the framing of the problem in terms of heat as context specific. As part of redefining energy poverty, scholars have begun to engage critical social theory, in particular actor-network theory and post-structuralist, post-humanist notions of assemblage. Harrison and Popke, in a pioneering paper in this regard, primarily marshal science and technology studies and actor-network theory to propose energy poverty as ‘‘a geographical assemblage of networked relations” (2011: 950) constituted by networked infrastructures, including the home, energy flows, and social and economic networks, together with the lived experiences of the energy poor. The authors’ aim is to foreground an understanding of energy poverty as inseparably socionatural, technical, and cultural. Key to this perspective, and our own understanding, is the notion that the discrete space of the home is in fact the product of networked social and natural inclusions and exclusions (Kaika, 2004). As we discuss below, when these processes enter into crisis, the power relations that produce the fetish of the home are exposed. Day and Walker (2013) building on the work of Harrison and Popke, posit an assemblage framework in order to assign agency to non-human nature and to foreground the dynamic and relational character of energy poverty, opening up possibilities to imagine change (see also Buzar, 2007a; Powells, 2009). We aim to contribute to these debates by drawing upon UPE to shift the focus of inquiry from how energy poverty comes together (i.e., as an assemblage) to the social struggles that contest the scalar and spatial politics of energy poverty (cf. Holifield, 2009).2 UPE seeks to tease apart the densely related elements of social

2 See also Harrison (2013), for the development of a cognate materialist approach to energy justice and uneven regional geographies in North Carolina.

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relations, socionatural processes, and spatial form that comprise urban environments (N.C. Heynen et al., 2006). Here, we elaborate upon three elements of the UPE framework that offer us the theoretical tools for our analysis: the uneven socionatural development of urban environments, the politics of scale, and critical justice claims. Building upon geographical theories of uneven development and the production of nature (Harvey, 1999 [1982]; Smith, 2008 [1984]), scholars of UPE argue that the inherited landscapes of uneven socionatural development in the city, and at other scales, reflect and reproduce distinct urban ecologies that are heteromorphic, dynamic and hierarchically linked. Environmental amenities such as green space and tree cover tend to concentrate in places of relative class privilege, linked in overdetermined ways to axes of social difference, such as race, gender, and migrant status (e.g., N. Heynen et al., 2006). These places of ecosocial privilege exist in relation to urban environments that concentrate dispossessed or marginalized populations, where such amenities are eroded or absent, and exposure to socionatural hazards is increased. These geographies of socionatural and economic uneven development are far from static; rather, they materialize a particular arrangement of relations forged by the urban ‘‘metabolism” of nature, capitalist accumulation, and cultural and social formations. Metabolism is a key metaphor in this literature: the term describes the socionatural forces that produce the spatial form of the city as fundamentally irreducible to distinct social or natural phenomena (Swyngedouw, 2006). While advocates of an assemblage approach argue that a UPE framework is overly fixed and determined (Holifield, 2009), UPE scholars instead posit urban metabolism, and the uneven geographies that are its material expression, as produced through human labor and non-human processes, and thus claim these materialities to be more creative and potentially contingent than presumed by such a critique (Heynen, 2013). Precisely our analysis here aims to demonstrate this latter argument through a grounded account of sociospatial struggles over urban energy metabolism. Our effort is inseparable from a process-based approach to scale as the interaction between socionatural, economic and political forces (Smith, 1992; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003). A politics of scale focuses our investigation on social power hierarchies and the metabolism of nature associated with the circulation of capital, on the one hand, and the levels of regulation and governance that shape material flows, on the other (Swyngedouw, 1997; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003). Here, we see the generative possibilities to think about the home as both a networked space and a site of scalar politics (Marston and Smith, 2001; Bulkeley, 2005). The modern home, argues Kaika, is ideologically constructed as independent and disconnected from natural processes, which are mediated through a series of infrastructural networks and social power relations, not least gender (2004: 275). Kaika writes that ‘‘the familiarity of the domestic space conceals the ‘violence’ (in the form of social power relations) dwelling in the institutions, which make the construction and sustenance of any edifice possible” (2004: 278). A water or fuel shut off precisely exposes these relations of violence and power that constitute the home as a domestic and interior space. For the dweller, such a ‘‘domestic network crisis” (2004: 277) exposes the bundle of socionatural, cultural and economic relations that both make the home possible and are immanent to the commodity fetish of the home as a discrete, individualized, inside space. We can extend this perspective to consider the scalar politics of urban climate governance, which often focuses on individual households and behaviors (Rice, 2014). As we discuss at length below, key and often unrecognized social and spatial differences – for example, tenancy versus ownership and their relative concentrations in given neighborhoods – shape access to ‘‘resources for adaptation” (Mee et al., 2014).

The ability of groups to transform a domestic network crisis into a scale of action is not predetermined, although the concentration of utility shut-offs in particular neighborhoods provides the opportunity for such a transformation, as we discuss below. Activists who organize such a political reframing of the domestic network crisis face considerable obstacles, however. In mobilizations around water shut-offs from South Africa to Detroit, residents and activists have confronted a neoliberal ideology that seeks to deactivate the potential social power of such crises by doubling down on narratives and practices of individual responsibility and ‘‘equal access” to fee-based services (e.g., Roberts, 2008; Smith, 2004; Caruso, 2011). These narratives and practices in the US are both sustained by and reproduce race-class hierarchies, while erasing systematic racism (see e.g., Joseph, 2014). Finally, we consider how a UPE framework, viewed through lens of our particular case, can contribute to discussions of justice claims in relation to energy poverty. To date, these discussions largely mobilize the language of environmental justice (Hall, 2013). Walker and Day argue that these claims encompass three notions of justice: distributional, recognition and procedural justice (2012; see also Walker, 2009). The three recognized causes of energy poverty – low incomes, high prices and inadequate housing – are interacting distributional inequalities and have been the focus of demands for distributional justice, such as subsidies to energy consumption and to weatherization. Recognition and procedural justice are also central, although less acknowledged, in energy poverty advocacy, particularly as they relate to inefficient housing and heating systems. In the literature on energy poverty, recognition injustice is linked primarily to vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the very young, who suffer the effects of energy poverty more acutely and are less likely to be able to access adequate warmth through programs that do not consider their vulnerability specifically (Boardman, 2013). Procedural justice is closely related to recognition. The efforts of community groups to address energy poverty hinges upon their access to information and legal recourse, as well as community involvement in decisionmaking (Boardman, 2013; Walker and Day, 2012). While early UPE scholarship outlined a strong binary between the liberal rights and localist claims of environmental justice scholarship and activism versus a Marxist frame that centered upon the unequal structures of capitalism (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003), we follow Ranganathan and Balazs (2015) in considering the ways that environmental justice approaches and UPE can inform one another. Their discussion helps us to frame justice claims at the center of energy poverty advocacy through the proximate dimension of access, that is, the limitations that low income, high cost, and inefficient housing place on the ability of residents to access affordable heat. A UPE perspective complements this proximate dimensions with a processual one (Ranganathan and Balazs, 2015), which considers how these limitations have been produced through specific power relations and materialized in uneven geographies. We elaborate further on how a UPE perspective, as developed in dialogue with our case, can contribute to framing critical environmental justice demands in energy poverty policy and activism in the conclusion.

3. Neoliberal regulation of energy consumption The struggle over utility-managed conservation funds must be understood within the context of neoliberal energy consumption policy in the US. Major federal action on energy conservation began with the passage of the Energy Conservation Act in 1976 in the wake of the first oil shock. In parallel, the Carter Administration established the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) in

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1976 to improve the energy efficiency of low-income homes (Kaiser and Pulsipher, 2004). WAP funds saw a major one-time increase in 2009 under the federal stimulus package passed in the wake of the US financial crisis (Gerdes, 2012). As we discuss below, statewide organizing by community groups around these stimulus funds lay the groundwork for what would become a regional coalition demanding reform in Western New York. Beyond the stimulus monies, funding for WAP has been inconsistent and inadequate. Experts estimate that only 20% of income-eligible households have been reached by WAP (Kaiser and Pulsipher, 2003, 2006). The second income targeted federal conservation program is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), established in 1981 as part of the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act. LIHEAP assists families who fall within 150% of the federal poverty line by paying a portion of recipients’ energy bills directly to the energy provider. Like WAP, LIHEAP funds are distributed through block grants to states. States can choose to allocate a portion of the funds for heating equipment repair or replacement, but the majority of funds go towards direct heating subsidies. States distribute funds on a ‘‘first come, first serve” basis to eligible consumers until either demand for funds is met or funds run out. In Buffalo, some residents cannot afford to heat their homes until LIHEAP fund distribution begins in mid-November, a month with average lows of 34 °F, and LIHEAP funds often run out. Indeed, LIHEAP opening day brings hundreds out in the cold to stand in long lines to access this limited government assistance. Since the 1990s, the regulation of energy conservation has increasingly devolved to the state and regional level. The primary avenue for this shift has been the turn towards ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs, a ‘‘user pays” model that, as we discuss below, has all too easily ignored the structures of inequality that shape the burden of energy poverty. This rescaling, coupled with a form of regressive taxation, is typical of neoliberal policy shifts (e.g., Brenner et al., 2010). Although piloted in the early 1990s, rate-payer programs proliferated in the early 2000s, promoted by the Department of Energy, which began to provide technical assistance to states to develop ratepayer funded conservation programs. California and New York lead the country in volume of funding through these programs. Across the country, 90% of these programs target reductions in electricity use. With the roll out of these ratepayer programs, state utility regulating commissions instituted Efficiency Resource/Portfolio Standards (EERS/EEPS) to create binding targets, and to offset disincentives, for utility companies to save energy. In New York State, the Public Service Commission (henceforth, the Commission) monitors and regulates utility companies. In 2008, the Commission established the NYS EEPS with the goal of reducing forecasted electricity use by 15% by 2015, with comparable outcomes for natural gas conservation. All utility companies in the state were required to submit energy efficiency programs. The NYS Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is a public benefit corporation which works with the Commission to administer funds and programs that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in order to meet state targets. NYSERDA’s EmPowerNY program generally serves as the mechanism for distributing ratepayer funds collected by utility companies statewide to contractors and consumers for conservation projects, such as rebates for energy efficient appliances and weatherization. As part of a larger request to the Commission to increase natural gas rates and to re-design service charges to customers, National Fuel proposed a ratepayer-funded conservation scheme, called the Conservation Incentive Program (CIP), in 2007. National Fuel presented the program as a way to encourage environmentally conscious behavior and to improve the energy efficiency of housing

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stock within its service area. The program’s critics would later allege that National Fuel put forth the CIP as a way to curry favor with the Commission for its requested rate increase. While the Commission would technically regulate the program, CIP would be managed by the utility and would be independent of NYSERDA. The program was to have four parts: a non-residential business efficiency incentive, residential rebates for installation of energy efficient appliances (i.e., water heaters and furnaces), low-income weatherization funding (called the Low Income Usage Reduction Program, or LIURP), and education and outreach, with the stated goal of informing customers about the program. Like other ratepayer programs, the CIP would be funded through a surcharge on each customer’s fuel bill, pro-rated to the volume of usage, averaging around $20 per customer per year, amounting to approximately $10 million annually to fund the program. The utility would allocate CIP monies amongst each program component as it deemed necessary, subject to approval by the Commission. Following public hearings and negotiations between National Fuel and the Commission, an agreement was reached: rates were increased on all customers, the CIP was established to promote energy efficiency as a counterweight to these higher charges, and a revenue decoupling mechanism was instituted to remove any disincentive for National Fuel to promote efficiency (which would decrease gas sales). Additionally, a new annual return on equity (ROE, a profitability measure) limit was set at 9.1% (State of New York Public Service Commission, 2007a, 2007b). As we discuss in the following section, this 2007 rate case settlement, which remained the prevailing regulation on rates and National Fuel profits, together with the establishment of the new utility-controlled conservation program, would lead to significant struggles with community groups confronting energy poverty in Buffalo.

4. The PUSH-National Fuel Campaign in Buffalo Buffalo has faced decline common to other rustbelt cities in the US. The number of high wage manufacturing jobs decreased substantially in the latter quarter of the twentieth century, and subsequent job growth was concentrated in the low-wage service sector (Taylor et al., 2013). The city’s population fell by nearly 37% over the same period, and the decrease continued into the new millennium. Indeed, by 2010, Buffalo’s population of 261,310 residents was less than half that of the city’s peak recorded half a century earlier (US Census, 2010). While the city faced an unemployment rate around 40% higher than the national average (13.8% compared to 9.7%, ACS, 2013), the poverty rate was a staggering 30.1% (US Census, 2010), that is, double the national average, reflecting the poor quality of jobs in Buffalo. Marked racial disparities exist in these figures. The unemployment rates for African-American males, Hispanic males and females, and white males were 12.4%, 18.6% and 9.3% respectively (ACS, 2013). African-Americans in Buffalo had a median household income of just $22,836, half the average for white households in the same year, and the poverty rate was 39.6% (ACS, 2013). Latinos in the city fared even worse: median household income was $17,252 and the poverty rate was 49.8% (ACS, 2013). Similar to other rustbelt cities, these dismal numbers reflect deep urban-suburban race and class divides. According to Magavern (2007), Buffalo is the eighth most segregated city in the US. The city is 40% African-American and 10% Latino, while inner suburbs are over 80% white and outer suburbs are over 95% white (ACS, 2013). The median household income in the outer suburbs is more than double that of the city, and the unemployment rate is less than one-fifth (ACS, 2013). The consequences of uneven development on urban housing have created a context for pervasive energy poverty in this northern

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city. Nearly two-thirds of Buffalo’s housing stock was built before 1939 (ACS, 2013). The city had an extremely high housing vacancy rate of 16.9% in 2013 and the median value of owner-occupied homes was a mere $66,600 (ACS, 2013). The vast majority of city residents are low-income tenants, half of whom spent more than 35% of their income on rent (ACS, 2013). Tenants suffer from a ‘‘split incentive” problem in addressing inefficient housing. Whereas the tenant absorbs the cost of energy inefficiency in the form of high gas bills, the landlord covers efficiency improvements like weatherization, presumably recuperated through higher rents, but not necessarily given low-income neighborhoods that cannot bear rent increases (Bird and Hernandez, 2012; see also Hernandez and Bird, 2010). In addition, due to the low-value of owner-occupied housing in the city, efficiency upgrades for homeowners – many on fixed incomes – are also largely out of reach.

4.1. Origins of PUSH and energy poverty activism on Buffalo’s West Side The community group PUSH was founded in 2005 to address housing issues in one of the city’s most disinvested neighborhoods, the West Side. The fortunes of the West Side had fluctuated with those of the city. By the early 2000s, the neighborhood was home primarily to Puerto Rican, African-American and new refugee communities (most notably, Burmese) either working in extremely low-wage sectors or excluded from the formal labor market altogether. The West Side concentrated a dilapidated housing stock, a dearth of environmental amenities like parks, and poor food access. Nearly 70% of residential property on the West Side was recorded as rental housing (see Fig. 1). Absentee landlords owned a considerable proportion of the residential property, contributing to patterns of underinvestment in the neighborhood (see Scanlon, 2015), including highly energy inefficient homes. Inspired by the organizing methods of Saul Alinsky and the history of radical black community organizing in the US, PUSH’s two founders – a former labor organizer and a community organizer – along with a growing group of neighborhood activists, began to build a membership-based organization to address the West Side’s needs. Their first campaign succeeded in challenging the city’s policy of extensive demolition of vacant homes, winning a commitment to rehabilitate five hundred lots in the neighborhood. The group started to develop green housing projects, to construct community gardens, and to reclaim abandoned houses, converting the latter into quality rentals for low-income residents. In 2007, the organization’s members identified high gas bills and inefficient homes as a major impediment to individual and community wellbeing. As a result, PUSH began to focus on improving the efficiency of the neighborhood’s housing stock. Brenda Miller, who would become the coordinator of the National Fuel Campaign, recalled her experience upon moving to the West Side that same year. ‘‘I was there for two weeks and it was cold in the house and my gas bills were really, really high,” said Miller. Miller had unpaid gas bills from her previous residence, adding to her household’s financial burden, and her new home was poorly insulated, contributing to excessive heating bills. She repeatedly had her gas turned off, and recounted her personal struggles to PUSH members and others. ‘‘I started telling my story, how it is to live without gas, which exceeded to a high electricity bill because of the things you have to do,” such as turning on hot plates and space heaters. Miller’s account illustrates the domestic network crisis of the energy poor home, revealing the violence of asymmetrical social power relations, including those between landlord and tenant (e.g., the ‘‘split incentive” and underinvestment more generally), capital and (racialized and gendered) labor (e.g., low-wage jobs disproportionately occupied by people of color, especially women), and the

state and low-income residents (e.g., a piecemeal and underfunded heating assistance program). The act of sharing her story led to the recognition both on Miller’s part and on the part of others in the organization that high bills and gas shut offs were a common experience. ‘‘I thought I was the only one that the gas was off,” Miller recalls, ‘‘but it was everybody.”3 Miller’s willingness to share her experience of energy poverty with other community members contributed to building a sense of common cause and motivation to seek collective solutions. ‘‘If it wasn’t for me telling my story, you just know people are getting [their] gas turned off, but to actually hear the story . . . they [other neighborhood residents] was basically like there [with me],” said Miller. By 2007, PUSH was just beginning to consider weatherization as a part of its activities, while many of the neighborhood residents and PUSH members were facing the limitations of the state’s heating assistance program, LIHEAP (which residents call HEAP). As Maxine Murphy, a PUSH activist and later board chairperson, with deep roots in radical black organizing, explained, ‘‘one of my neighbors, the gas was cut off. She was waiting for HEAP to open up so she can get her gas turned back on.” ‘‘In the meantime,” Murphy continued, ‘‘they’ve got an electric heater for six people, one little heater in the house, trying to heat up until HEAP [opens].” Notwithstanding the insufficient state funds, residents fully recognized the poor orientation of heating assistance in a neighborhood with such dilapidated housing stock and a high concentration of rental properties. Murphy continued, ‘‘all HEAP does is pay a gas bill. It’s still not addressing the problem that caused the high gas bill, which is inadequate housing.” In effect, Miller, Murphy and other mostly female residents, supported by PUSH, began articulating the energy poor home as a political scale. 4.2. National Fuel Campaign, neighborhood ‘David’ versus utility ‘Goliath’ Given inadequate federal assistance, in early 2010, PUSH began to explore accessing funds for weatherization available through the relatively new conservation program, CIP, managed by National Fuel (see Section 3). Through existing reporting requirements, the organization quickly realized that most projects were focused on rebates for furnaces and water heaters, rebates that the group presumed benefitted primarily middle- and high-income homeowners who could afford these appliances and who had both means and motivation to invest in their own homes. The organization was also alarmed to find that CIP funds – ostensibly earmarked for informing the public about the program – were being put towards building National Fuel’s brand through advertising. Finally, the organization was concerned not only with how the program funds were being disbursed, but also with how they were being collected. As Kevin Connor, an ally researcher with a local progressive research group called the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI), would later comment in a public hearing on the program: ‘‘Lower income people in Buffalo pay more for the program than higher-income people in the ring around Buffalo . . . and that’s because CIP is charged on a volume basis” (see footnote 1). Because lower income residents lived in poorly insulated homes, their heating bills were significantly higher than higher income residents, and therefore their contributions to the CIP program were also disproportionate.

3 There are no significant protections against disconnection in New York State. The utility can legally disconnect the home any time of year except the period between Christmas and New Year’s. Time of notice (72 h) and for payment plan negotiation (15 days) are specified for households with vulnerable residents (i.e., elderly, sick and children). There are no temperature-based restrictions by law, although informally the utility avoids shut-offs when the temperature is below 30 F/-1 C. National Fuel charges a seventy dollar reconnection fee.

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Fig. 1. Renter occupied housing and Buffalo’s West Side neighborhood.

Motivated by these concerns, the organization began by delivering a letter to National Fuel CEO David Smith that outlined the group’s position on gas shut-offs and CIP funding allocations, particularly the amount of CIP funds spent on advertising for the program, and requested a meeting to discuss these issues. A group of about twenty PUSH members, most of whom had their gas turned off, went to deliver the letter to National Fuel’s downtown office in the spring of 2010 (Esmonde, 2010). When National Fuel failed to respond to PUSH’s request for a meeting, organizers decided to escalate their efforts, coining the slogan ‘‘Turn up the heat on National Fuel.” From the perspective of grassroots activists like Murphy, the specific criticisms of the utility’s new program were part of a deepening neighborhood livelihood crisis attributed to the utility. ‘‘Cause gas bills was ridiculously high,” she explained, ‘‘and people was getting their gas turned off at an alarming rate. Our own members were getting their gas turned off numerous times. So we started protesting.” Beginning in September 2010, PUSH members travelled to suburban Amherst to protest in front of National Fuel’s headquarters, demanding an audience with the company CEO to discuss the group’s proposals to reform the CIP. PUSH organized several more protests over the course of the month that grew in size and frequency. Around this time, National Fuel requested a renewal of the existing 2007 rate settlement from the Commission, including the conservation program and its funding levels (see Section 3). Seeing an opportunity to shift the campaign by bringing in the regulatory agency, PUSH called upon the Commission to deny the request. ‘‘It became pretty clear that if you want to affect [National Fuel], you really have to engage the Public Service Commission,” recalled Aaron Bartley, PUSH co-founder. PUSH began to pressure the Commission to deny the renewal of the rate settlement in order to reform the conservation program in the manner that the group was advocating (Sommer, 2010a, 2010b). Following their request to the Commission, approximately sixty PUSH members gathered at National Fuel’s suburban headquarters in Amherst on September

18 to protest against the renewal of the rate case and the CIP, and again to seek an audience with the company CEO. ‘‘We wanted more money into weatherization. That’s all we wanted, to talk,” said Miller. National Fuel again refused to meet with PUSH and obtained a restraining order against the group, citing ‘‘escalating illegal, unprofessional and harassing tactics” (National Fuel Gas, 2010a). Apart from protest tactics, National Fuel dismissed the possibility of partnership with PUSH because of what the corporation deemed to be PUSH’s ‘‘limited agenda,” confined to Buffalo’s West Side, ‘‘which would exclude most customers in National Fuel’s 11 county New York service area from participating in a broad based conservation incentive program” (National Fuel Gas, 2010a). Following the protest, National Fuel filed a trespassing lawsuit against PUSH and one of its organizers. The CEO reaffirmed the company’s position against meeting or partnering with such an ‘‘extreme” group (Smith, 2010). For PUSH members, the company’s refusal to dialogue was bound up with its framing of the group as marginal, associated both with the group’s geographic base, the West Side, and its composition of mostly low-income people and people of color (Bartley, 2010). ‘‘They just refused cause we’re thugs, we’d been called, you know, thorns in their sides, only worried about us, activists, just lunatics,” said Jennifer Mecozzi, a West Side resident and PUSH’s board chair at the time. The reference to ‘thugs’ recalls recent controversy over the use of the term by the mayor of Baltimore to describe protesters following the killing of Freddie Gray (Stolberg and Stewart, 2015). In the context of Buffalo, where the race and class divide between suburban towns and the city’s low income neighborhoods is reinforced by poor public transportation links and a history of discrimination, PUSH had enacted a rare transgression of this boundary in organizing protests at the company’s suburban headquarters, in addition to actions at its downtown offices. For Mecozzi, the legal charges brought by National Fuel represented the company’s continued refusal to recognize the concerns of low-income residents. In an initial court hearing on the trespassing charges, which were

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eventually dropped, when questioned about alleged property damage, Mecozzi recalled saying, ‘‘Did I let them [other PUSH members] trample your grass a little to let you know you’re doing wrong by the community? Yeah, I did.”4 In addition to direct action, PUSH applied to the Commission for status as an active party in the regulatory proceedings that would decide on the renewal of the CIP and the existing rate settlement. In National Fuel’s brief to the Commission seeking the denial of PUSH’s request to be an active party, the company again sought to discredit PUSH not solely for ‘‘unprofessional” activity (i.e., direct action), but also for being unrepresentative of the utility’s service area, which covered roughly 10% of all New York State customers (National Fuel Gas, 2010b). Indeed, the company argued that the group was seeking to distort the conservation program through reform proposals that were ‘‘west-side specific” (National Fuel Gas, 2010b). The company cited PUSH’s own promotional materials, including their website and press releases, to argue to the Commission that ‘‘the ‘partnership’ that PUSH was pursuing with [National Fuel], was clearly directed at activities devoted to the West Side of Buffalo” (National Fuel Gas, 2010b). National Fuel noted that PUSH had recently begun to ‘‘[change] course, claiming to extend its focus to include a presumably larger area than the West Side and the City of Buffalo” (National Fuel Gas, 2010b), a claim that was still insufficient in geographic scope and unsubstantiated given PUSH’s own mandate. The Commission granted PUSH entrance to the proceedings over National Fuel’s objections nonetheless. This small procedural victory proved to be hollow, however. In late November, the Commission renewed the rate settlement and authorized only a minor reform of the CIP: $150,000 would be reallocated from appliance rebates to weatherization as the program now entered its fourth year (Robinson, 2010).

4.3. Scaling up the campaign and placing uneven geography at the center of the debate Indeed, the disappointing outcome from the perspective of PUSH forced the group to reconsider its approach to the campaign. PUSH had been involved in statewide organizing since 2009 to advocate for equitable distribution of stimulus monies in the wake of the financial crisis, with a focus on home energy efficiency. Despite this and other statewide efforts, organizers realized that PUSH had to do more to counter National Fuel’s claims of the group’s narrow geographic base, which was discrediting their campaign. The group needed to marshal broader support if it were going to convince regulators of the need for reform. As Eric Walker, PUSH co-founder, explained, the organization mobilized its statewide networks and partnered with an existing community group in the area, Voice Buffalo, to co-found the National Fuel Accountability Coalition (NFAC) in February 2011. The coalition was announced with a public meeting and letter to CEO Smith. The scaling up of the campaign from what organizers described as a ‘‘David and Goliath” conflict between a small neighborhood organization and the region’s utility was coupled with a reframing of the demands of the campaign. NFAC reiterated PUSH’s calls to reform the CIP in order to increase funding for weatherization of low-income homes to 50% of the program budget, but the agenda of the coalition also sought corporate reforms of the state-regulated utility itself. NFAC called 4 PUSH’s lawyer argued that the case filed by National Fuel constituted an impermissible Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) suit, that is, an unwarranted or frivolous lawsuit intended to silence or intimidate actors engaged in unwanted but otherwise legal speech. A state court agreed and the National Fuel claim against a PUSH organizer was dismissed. National Fuel eventually dropped the lawsuit against the organization in 2013 (National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation v. PUSH Buffalo).

for a reduction in compensation paid to the utility’s CEO, who had earned $7 million in total compensation in 2010, and an end to the utility’s involvement in hydro-fracking in Western Pennsylvania, energy that was being sold throughout Western New York (National Fuel Accountability Coalition, 2011). Following several petitions to the Commission and public demonstrations, the Commission scheduled four public hearings on CIP fund distribution, the first significant victory for PUSH and NFAC (Robinson, 2011). In preparation, NFAC compiled a more systematic analysis of the CIP with the assistance of the research group PAI, presenting evidence to support their calls for reform. Key to the NFAC report was the group’s analysis of the distribution of rebate funds. Based on public reporting, NFAC found that total program spending on residential rebates topped 10 million dollars by 2010, while spending on low-income weatherization had not yet reached 6 million (2011: 8). PUSH, and then NFAC, had been arguing that the rebate program did not benefit low-income, primarily rental households, who were in fact contributing substantially to the fund because of the volume basis used to calculate the on-bill charge. The argument was difficult to prove, however, because the public reporting requirements for the CIP included neither household income data nor geographic data. PAI’s initial request for zip coded data of CIP projects from National Fuel through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was denied. NFAC, with support from local politicians, pressured the company through letter writing and petitions and, eventually, the company released the information. The coalition was now able to substantiate their claims surrounding CIP program allocation. The coalition found that the city of Buffalo received furnace rebates for under 2.5% of households, while areas outside the city received rebates for as much as 10% of households. Our analysis of the same data found a similar result: an average of 2.4% of households received furnace rebates in Buffalo, while the average across the study area was 4.6, and nearly 6% for suburbs in the study area (Fig. 2). The majority of LIURP weatherization projects occurred within the city, with an average of 1.2% of homes benefitting from the program. Outside the city, only 0.27% of homes received weatherization funding (Fig. 3). Overall, although the city received a greater share of LIURP projects than surrounding areas, far fewer households were affected proportionate to the total number. Moreover, the city received less than half the average furnace rebate projects than the neighboring suburbs.5 The difference in funding between the two residential programs and the spatial disparity that this difference represented bolstered NFAC and PUSH’s claims of inequitable treatment under the CIP. In effect, the program was reinforcing historic patterns of unequal investment benefiting the region’s higher income areas and the effective transfer of funds from residents of inefficient housing in low-income neighborhoods paying higher on-bill charges through the conservation program. Based on this analysis, the NFAC report called for transparency, state management of the CIP, greater allocation of funds towards weatherization programs and away from advertising, and a contribution by National Fuel, out of profits and executive compensation, to the CIP (National Fuel Accountability Coalition, 2011; Robinson, 2011). In July, the members of the Commission held their public hearings on the CIP in Buffalo, suburban Amherst and in two other regional locales (Tighe, 2011). About three hundred people, mostly residents from low-income neighborhoods, attended the Buffalo hearing, where NFAC presented findings from its report, including a map of rebate fund distribution. In addition, residents from all over the city used the proceedings as a space to render public 5 CIP data was provided based on postal zip codes. Number of households was determined from Zip Code Tabulation Areas from Census 2010. Calculations for Fig. 2 presume one CIP furnace rebate per household.

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Fig. 2. Distribution of furnace rebates, 2008–2011.

Fig. 3. Distribution of weatherization projects, 2008–2011.

and social what many had experienced as individual shame and delinquency. ‘‘It was basically, again, stories and stories,” recalled Miller. Following the hearings, the Commission met with NFAC. In late October, the regulator announced sweeping changes to the program: CIP would fall under the management of the NY State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), through the EEPS and EmPowerNY initiatives (see Section 3); funding for low-income weatherization programs (i.e., LIURP) would increase to 50% of the CIP budget, representing a reallocation of approximately $4 million; and a significant portion of the education and outreach budget, criticized by activists as little more than a promotional fund for the utility, would be cut (Brilling, 2011). The mandate to increase weatherization funds had a clear effect on CIP allocations: low-income weatherization expenditure

(LIURP) exceeded rebate expenditure at the end of the 2011 for the first time and has continued to increase. By the end of 2014, weatherization projects represented more than twice the expenditure on residential rebates (see Fig. 4). 4.4. Statewide outcomes, from unequal distribution to recognition of inequality The Buffalo campaign clearly had an effect on statewide funding for weatherization as well. In the Commission’s order that ruled on the CIP, the Commission also considered NFAC’s statewide demand that half of all energy efficiency funding should go towards programs for low-income households, primarily weatherization. At the time, low-income programs represented 19% of the EEPS

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Fig. 4. CIP fund residential program allocation, 2008–2014.

residential program, while 30% of customers were defined as low-income (Brilling, 2011:15). The Commission went on to state the following: We have not, generally, required strict proportionality in allocating funds among customer classes. However, energy costs pose a proportionally higher burden on low income customers than other customers. It is consistent with our policy goals and with the strong level of public comment on this issue to provide increased energy efficiency services to meet the needs of low-income households. [Brilling, 2011:15, emphasis added]

than returning all ‘‘excess” profits to customers through one-time small credits, as the regulator had initially proposed, $1.75 million was allocated to weatherization for low-income households, and $250,000 was earmarked for emergency furnace replacement for LIHEAP program recipients, in addition to a smaller refund to all customers (Terreri, 2013). PUSH and NFAC’s advocacy again proved successful in shifting the de facto approach of the state from nominally equal distribution (i.e., all customers get the same) to recognition of the unequal burden of energy poverty on low-income households and thus the need for targeted allocations. 5. Conclusion

The regulator proceeded to authorize an increase in weatherization funds to 30% statewide, in effect implementing the strict proportionality negated in its own statement. Despite falling short of NFAC’s demand of 50%, the outcome was significant. The Commission’s decision led to an increase in NYSERDA’s EmPower budget for low-income weatherization, funded by the state’s gas utilities, of $18.6 million (Brilling, 2011; Robinson, 2011). In the years following the campaign, PUSH, together with NFAC, continued to follow the Commission’s activities. In 2011, PUSH worked with community partners to pass a statewide law that the group helped to write called Green Jobs – Green NY, which includes measures to marshal additional funds into low-income weatherization and to ensure that weatherization work can offer employment to low-income residents. In 2013, when PUSH learned that the regulator had initiated an ‘‘over-earnings case” against the utility, the organization again decided to become involved. The Commission had petitioned the courts to adjust rates and to reclaim over-earned moneys from National Fuel above the agreed 9.1% ROE profitability measure.6 Shifting methods from direct action to legal tactics, PUSH worked primarily through its lawyer to gain access to the legal proceedings as an active party. At issue for PUSH and NFAC was how the excess profits reclaimed by the regulator, if awarded, would be returned to the public. The Commission sought a refund for all customers, while PUSH and NFAC sought a portion of the funds to be directed towards low-income weatherization. By the end of 2013, the court ruled in favor of reclaiming the utilities’ overearnings, a total of $7.5 million. Rather 6 Again, see Section 3 for background on the 2007 rate agreement. The Commission described this agreement (implemented in 2008 and renewed, as discussed above, in 2010) as ‘‘stale.” According to James Duggan, PUSH’s attorney in the case, the profits earned above those allowed by the regulator stemmed from the twinned circumstances of declining gas supply costs due to hydro-fracking in Pennsylvania and the rate freeze. As Duggan explained, PUSH argued for active party status by virtue of being an organization that represented ‘‘a segment of the community that suffers the most from inefficient heating and lack of funding necessary to alleviate energy conservation issues.”

Through its campaign targeting National Fuel, PUSH successfully transformed the individualized experience of ‘‘unaffordable heat” into a social demand. In response, the utility challenged the group on social and spatial grounds. Nation Fuel initially dismissed activists as ‘‘marginal” and ‘‘unprofessional,” seeking to undermine the group’s legitimacy and the demands of low-income, primarily African-American, Puerto Rican and immigrant urban residents. The company quickly subsumed this social claim within a spatial one: it sought to circumscribe the group as illegitimate because of its small geographic base in a single, low-income neighborhood. The utility juxtaposed its 11-county service area – and associated passive, demand-driven form of conservation fund allocation – with activists’ place-based claims for earmarking allocations to lowincome areas. This spatial challenge from the company initially undermined PUSH’s calls for reform, since the regulator appeared to agree with the company. The response from PUSH and ally groups to create a coalition that would scale up the opposition to National Fuel’s program was ultimately successful in convincing the regulator to adopt major reforms to this particular conservation program, as well as statewide changes to similar programs. We have argued that the theoretical tools of UPE – uneven socionatural development, a process-based approach to scale, and critical justice claims – understood as mutually reinforcing, offer a robust framework for understanding energy poverty. We return here to Ranganathan and Balazs (2015) and think through in particular how distribution, recognition, and procedural justice claims are transformed into critical justice claims by linking these proximate demands to a processual approach that foregrounds the uneven geographies and asymmetric power relations that produce energy poverty. First, the campaign’s proximate demand for redistribution of conservation funds fundamentally depended upon a processual approach that signaled how the actions of the utility were reinforcing regional inequalities. The group’s focus on uneven development challenged passive forms of distribution (in the case of the conservation program) and

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proposals for equal distribution (in the case of returning overearnings as customer refunds), which would have further entrenched, rather than addressed, existing socioeconomic qua spatial divides. Second, recognition justice took a form less commonly observed in the UK and Eastern European, where the focus remains on vulnerable groups (e.g., Day and Walker, 2013). The claim for recognition also went beyond a demand simply ‘‘to reclaim denigrated places and place identities” for purposes of inclusion (Walker, 2009: 625; see also Schlosberg, 2007). Rather, in highlighting the donut-like pattern of funding for household efficiency upgrades in the region, and in supporting city residents to publicize their struggles to heat their homes, recognition justice foregrounded the relationship between ‘‘energy wealth” and energy poverty, i.e., suburban housing stock improved through funds derived disproportionately from ratepayers in inefficient urban housing stock. Finally, procedural justice took the form of a proximate demand for access to the regulatory process by the community group and for transparency, the latter in particular for geographic data on fund distribution. The processual claims that linked unequal distribution of conservation funds to uneven development in the region relied upon this challenge to the technocratic nature of utility regulation and the information that was accessed through it. In sum, UPE opens up generative terrain to think through the creative potential for contesting and transforming urban energy metabolism through struggles surrounding energy poverty and the energy-poor home at its heart. As a networked space, the home is epistemologically inseparable from networked urban infrastructures and institutions, such as utility companies and their attendant processes of regulation (Monstadt, 2009; Buzar, 2007a). As a site of the interaction between socionatural and political forces, we have seen how the energy-poor home, and the ‘network crisis’ of disconnection, can also become a political scale, shaping the neoliberal regulation of energy provision and energy conservation. If the analysis of relations of power, especially in first generation UPE, remained abstract and constrained by economistic assumptions, such grounded engagements informed by UPE of the sort we have developed here contribute to the development of a more nuanced approach. Seen through this lens, the analysis of energy poverty at the confluence of uneven socionatural development, the politics of scale and critical justice claims builds our understanding of political possibilities to contest and transform urban metabolism from below. Acknowledgements This research was funded by the Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship through the Graduate School of the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. Anthony is deeply grateful to the members of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), particularly co-founder Aaron Bartley and attorney James Duggan, for their hospitality and openness, and forever indebted to Dr. Marion Werner for her guidance and patience, without whom this research would not have been possible. Both authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. All errors of interpretation are our own. References American Community Survey, 2013. US Census. Accessed online: . Anderson, W., White, V., Finney, A., 2012. Coping with low incomes and cold homes. Energy Poverty 49, 40–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.01.002. Bartley, Aaron, 2010. National fuel snubs efforts to improve program. Buffalo News, Retrieved from (September 23). Bhattacharya, J., DeLeire, T., Haider, S., Currie, J., 2003. Heat or eat? Cold-weather shocks and nutrition in poor American families. Am. J. Publ. Health 93 (7), 1149–1154. http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.93.7.1149.

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