Energy Scarcity and Extreme Heat

This story was produced through a collaboration between Radio IQ and Climate Central, a nonadvocacy science and news group. Arielle Tannenbaum and Jennifer Brady (Climate Central) contributed data reporting.

Deborah Nagy has lived all her 71 years in the plateau of the Appalachian Mountains near the Kentucky border, and she fondly remembers the summers of her childhood. “When you're little, you just run around and go out barefoot. We’d play in the creeks and you’d find your water hole and go in it,” she says with a laugh. “But as you’re getting older, you just feel the heat differently.”

What Nagy is experiencing is more than a feeling; it’s a scientific reality. Seniors are acutely vulnerable to health impacts from heat — and, as pollution traps more heat, the summer is becoming more intense. NOAA listed 2024 as the hottest year on record and, according to the 2024 EPA, over the past century the past three Julys were Virginia’s three hottest on record.

With a monthly income of $1,140 and chronic kidney disease, Nagy is particularly vulnerable to heat waves, sometimes forcing her to choose among food, medicine or electricity.

A Climate Central forensic analysis of weather data from near Nagy’s hometown of Wise shows that climate change doubled the likelihood of extreme heat measured during 28 days in July. Of those 28 days, climate change increased the likelihood of the day’s maximum temperatures by at least five times. Across Virginia, the amount of electricity needed every year on average to keep a home comfortably cool has increased by about a third since 1970.

The number and intensity of extreme heat events is projected to continue to grow as fossil fuel burning continues, increasing health risks for seniors like Nagy on limited incomes. Summer nights are getting warmer, making it harder for people without sufficient air conditioning to recover from the heat of the day. And humidity is rising alongside the heat, worsening health threats.

It can be downright balmy in Appalachian Virginia compared with the Piedmont and the Coast. Still, many Scott and Wise County residents are hard hit since they endure some of the nation’s highest rates of energy poverty — the inability to adequately heat or cool one’s home. Defined as households that spend more than 6% of their income on energy bills, energy poverty is exacerbating existing inequities within Virginia’s communities amid climate change.

Despite growing recognition of the health risks that extreme heat poses, much of the focus has been on urban heat islands, where extensive paving and shortfalls in tree cover raise temperatures. Researchers at the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment say that, while rural areas tend to be several degrees cooler than metro areas, risks of heat illness can be seven to 10 times greater.

Rural housing is more likely to be poorly insulated and to have inefficient heating and cooling systems, driving up utility costs. Rural populations tend to be older. They also have higher rates of chronic health conditions like high blood pressure and emphysema due in part to careers spent in industries like agriculture and construction. And healthcare access is more limited.

Those rural factors lead to a “layering of burdens without a means at the individual level to combat those burdens,” says Ashley Ward, Director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke.

Southwest Virginia’s coal mining region has some of the highest rates of chronic disease in the country, as well as an aging population. “If you have COPD or black lung and you can’t breathe, and it’s 100 degrees in your house, that absolutely could be life or death.” says Marsha Craiger, emergency services director at Mountain Empire Older Citizens (MEOC).

Extreme heat also worsens common age-related health conditions such as heart, lung and kidney disease.

“[Older] bodies are less efficient at regulating temperature, and they often take medications that impair cooling functions like sweating and blood circulation,” says epidemiologist Jaime Madrigano, Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Older individuals sometimes don't have the same risk perception of heat so their bodies may feel cooler. There’s also this kind of lived experience of, like, of course it's hot. It’s summer.”

Diana Hernández, Associate Professor at Columbia University and author of Powerless: The People’s Struggle for Energy, says the South is disproportionately impacted by energy insecurity due to extreme heat, the concentration of poverty and shortfalls in energy assistance.

While low-income populations across the board are disproportionately impacted, there is a racialized component to energy insecurity, which is increasing as electricity prices rise and the need for air conditioning rises with the temperatures.

“People of color, especially Black folks, are hit so hard because of the different feeders related to structural racism,” Hernández said.

This is an issue Norton resident Tiffany Hunter understands intimately.

“Wise County is an incredibly impoverished area,” Hunter says. “Due to things like racial inequities in hiring opportunities, there are a lot of African Americans living below the poverty line, who have power bills that have been insane the past few years.”

Hunter considers herself a part of that group. The 45-year-old is recovering from a liver transplant following respiratory failure. Still, she worries more about her aging, widowed mother more than herself. In addition to having severe diabetes and early onset dementia, her mother is charged energy bills that are unaffordable.

“For the past three years, she has had monthly power bills of up to $500,” says Hunter. “That's basically impossible for most people in Wise County to pay.”

In addition to socioeconomic struggles, the struggle to access affordable energy is driven largely by rising costs of electricity. The rapid growth of data centers in Virginia’s Appalachia is a contributing factor. These concentrated, large-scale facilities strain local power grids, soak up critical water resources and drive up the cost of electricity. A study from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission estimated that, if the anticipated growth in AI continues, Virginia’s electricity consumption could nearly triple by 2040.

Marsha Craiger administers Senior Cool Care, a state energy assistance program that serves people who are over 60 who experience poverty.

Katie Burke

“People are already struggling and doing without food or medicine sometimes to pay for heat or cooling,” Craiger said. “We can’t do everything for everybody, but we all work together to do what we can.”

Using a $6,600 grant from Dominion Energy, this summer Senior Cool Care purchased and distributed 40 fans and 36 air conditioners to households throughout Lee, Scott and Wise Counties, as well as the city of Norton. Still, there are 110 people on the waitlist.

Nagy was one of the lucky few to score a window unit for her home. “My heat pump died, so I called down there,” she says. “We couldn’t have lived this summer without it.” It sits in her kitchen window, framed by robin’s egg blue curtains. A dream catcher with matching blue and purple feathers hangs above it.

Rural areas generally have a scarcity of cooling centers and public health programs to offer support during heat waves. Nearby churches and a homeless shelter also stepped in to provide shelter but still couldn’t help everybody who needed it. During the July heat wave, federal assistance helped Nagy open her home to two unhoused people.

Deborah Nagy, the lifelong resident of the Appalachian Plateau, is one of more than 200,000 Virginians who have relied on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to keep her home cool in summer and warm in winter.

Established in 1981, the federal program has been a lifeline for low-income households who struggle to pay for heating and cooling. However, despite its strong bipartisan support, Pres. Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to eliminate the program. In April, his administration fired the staff that administered the program.

Cuts to federal energy assistance could mean life or death for millions of Americans for whom electricity bills are expected to rise along with demand. MEOC already fundraises locally to help seniors with energy assistance, and most seniors in their area who qualify for LIHEAP need both LIHEAP and the MEOC funds to keep up with their bills. More policy prescriptions at the state and local levels could attempt to bridge the gap. However, that doesn’t seem to be a priority.

“People don't get the true reality of what poverty looks like unless you live inside of it or you're closely acquainted with someone who lives inside of poverty,” says Hunter. ”So they don't see the importance of a program that will assist people in paying bills. It's not just a handout.”

Without LIHEAP it’s unclear how people like Nagy and Hunter and her mother will pay for heating and cooling. “It really scares me to think about LIHEAP funds being completely cut out,” Craiger says. “I can’t imagine what it will be like if that disappears.”