US National study finds energy bills hit minority households the hardest

New research shows race, not just income, drives energy inequity in America

Binghamton University

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New research co-authored by Binghamton University, State University of New York faculty reveals that minorities across America are paying a higher percentage of their household income on energy bills.

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Credit: "Power lines poles" by Matthew Paul Argall is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

 

Heating, cooling and powering a home isn’t cheap, and new research shows that some Americans are paying a higher percentage of their hard-earned dollars to cover their energy bills.

A first-of-its-kind national study co-authored by Associate Professor George Homsy at Binghamton University, State University of New York reveals a stark reality: minority communities, namely Black Americans, are paying a disproportionately higher share of their income to power their homes.

The study, published in Energy Research & Social Science, examined energy burden – the percentage of income spent by a household on things like heating, lighting, cooking, air conditioning, etc. – across 65,000 census tracts in America. Homsy directs Binghamton University’s Environmental Studies Program and is a member of the Department of Public Administration and Policy.

The average American household spends 3.2% of its income on energy. The new study, which examined data from the U.S. Department of Energy, revealed that, even when accounting for income, African Americans face a significantly larger average energy burden per household, with Latin Americans also paying slightly more.

A higher energy burden isn’t just a headache. For some, it might mean the difference between being able to afford other necessities, such as medicine, transportation or healthy food.

A figure from the new paper shows that households in majority African American majority census tracts pay an average of 5.1 % of their income for energy. Image Credit: George Homsy.

“We often say that African Americans suffer more, but we often blame it just on income. And the reality is, there is something more there,” said Homsy. “It’s not just because they tend to be poor. There is something that’s putting them at a disadvantage. I think what happened is it happens to be where they live.”

Homsy points to older homes and higher rental rates as possible factors in these communities. Minorities are more likely to live in older homes, which tend to have higher energy burdens due to poor insulation, older appliances, etc. And because these homes are often rental units, the residents cannot make changes and take advantage of energy-saving upgrades. Thus, the issues only deepen.

“All of these things combine to put extra burden on African Americans – that’s the bottom line of the paper,” said Homsy.

Homsy pointed out that while some papers had looked at energy burden before, none had examined both race and income. An African American household might be earning a middle-class income, for example, but because of where they live, they might still face a higher energy burden.

Homsy said that policymakers need to put special effort into working with minority communities to alleviate the inequities caused by decades of housing discrimination. In another paper currently under review, he and a colleague interviewed sustainability officials, asking how they try to lower the energy burden of people living in rental units.

“It is harder to get to rental units where a lot of poor people live. We need to work harder to get into these communities of color,” said Homsy.

The paper, “Energy burden: Exploring the intersection of race, income, and community characteristics across the United States,” was co-authored by Ki Eun Kang from the Department of Public Administration at California State University, San Bernardino.

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DOI

10.1016/j.erss.2025.104207 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Energy burden: Exploring the intersection of race, income, and community characteristics across the United States

Model reroutes livestock trucks to reduce risk of infection

North Carolina State University

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A new study from North Carolina State University looked at reducing between-farm infections by modeling a new way of routing the trucks that transport feed and livestock between pig farms and from farms to market. The rerouting system showed that even without effective truck cleaning and disinfection, it reduced up to 42% of the contacts between infected and uninfected farms via vehicle movements.

“Currently, vehicles used to transport feed or pigs are dispatched from a call center, and based on weekly schedules,” says Gustavo Machado, assistant professor of population health and pathobiology at NC State and corresponding author of the work.

“But we wanted to see if changing the way that trucks are routed between farms could be a good way to prevent the spread of diseases that are extremely costly to farmers, such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) and porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus (PRRSV).”

Machado and his team used data from 1,609 commercial swine farms, which included the number of animals and GPS data from the trucks traveling between farms, as well as data from enhanced on-farm Secure Pork Supply (SPS) biosecurity plans hosted in the Rapid Access Biosecurity RABapp™ (https://rabapp.org/), which is a national initiative aimed at preventing the spread of pathogens between swine farms.

The data gave the researchers information about which farms had an illness outbreak, as well as when vehicles were traveling to cleaning and disinfection (C&D) stations. They put the data into a computer model that looked at different variables for each vehicle, such as vehicle status, shipment delay, disease risk, C&D, and whether the vehicle was traveling between different farms.

The model produced a vehicle scoring system that ranked each vehicle from 1 to 19.

For example, a vehicle with inactive or busy-maintenance status was grouped in score level 1. Conversely, an active vehicle that could complete the delivery within a predefined number of minutes, was cleaned after the most recent shipment, and wasn’t traveling to farms with a current outbreak or between different farm communities, thereby reducing contamination risk, scored a 19.

The model rerouted trucks based on the ranking system to both keep vehicles that were serving farms with outbreaks from traveling to other communities and to maximize C&D when the vehicles had to move between different communities.

“The one piece of the puzzle that we don’t have is exactly how effective C&D is; therefore, more work needs to be done to collect such data under field conditions,” Machado says. “However, even if we assume that the C&D is largely ineffective, the rerouting model still shows a 42% reduction in contacts between infected and uninfected farms, which should translate into a big reduction in pathogen spread.

“We also have to recognize that there are drawbacks to this method, specifically in increased costs due to more frequent C&D stops, which increases overall distance traveled and wear and tear on vehicles,” Machado adds. “Our next steps will be to look at the actual costs of rerouting as well as the effectiveness of cleaning and disinfection.”

The study appears in Preventive Veterinary Medicine and is supported by the Swine Health Information Center. Jason Galvis from NC State is the first author. Cesar Corzo of the University of Minnesota St. Paul also contributed to the work.

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Note to editors: An abstract follows.

“Mitigating between-farm disease transmission through simulating vehicle rerouting and enhanced cleaning and disinfection protocols”

DOI: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106650

Authors: Jason Galvis, Gustavo Machado, North Carolina State University; Cesar Corso, University of Minnesota St. Paul
Published: Aug. 6, 2025 in Preventive Veterinary Medicine

Abstract:
The role of contaminated vehicles and the effectiveness of preventive strategies, such as cleaning and disinfection (C&D), in spreading infectious diseases among commercial swine farms under field conditions remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to reduce the risk of between-farm disease transmission through vehicle contacts by rerouting vehicles while considering C&D events and effectiveness. Vehicles were ranked based on specific criteria, including disease status of visited farms, vehicle contact network communities, C&D events, and shipment time efficiency. The rerouting system showed that, even when C&D was utterly inefficient, it reduced up to 42 % of the contacts between infected and uninfected farms via vehicle movements and 17 % of the total number of interactions between farms from distinct network communities. The rerouting efficacy increased with a C&D effectiveness of 100 %, reducing up to 100 % contacts between infected and uninfected farms and between farms from distinct network communities. Despite the potential benefit of preventing disease dissemination between the farms, the rerouting system increased by up to 81 % in C&D events and up to 54 % in distance traveled per vehicle. Ultimately, we have demonstrated that a rerouting vehicle system holds potential as an additional strategic tool for preventing and controlling the spread of diseases among farms through vehicle movements; however, given the additional time and effort required, its cost-benefit will depend on the severity of the disease being mitigated.

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Journal

Preventive Veterinary Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106650 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

“Mitigating between-farm disease transmission through simulating vehicle rerouting and enhanced cleaning and disinfection protocols”

Article Publication Date

16-Aug-2025

 

Tropical systems spin up Mid-South crop insurance rates

New research shows tropical systems play into crop insurance premium rates

University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

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Spatial relationship between average corn crop insurance base premium rates and hurricane incidence in the Mississippi Delta region (2002–2021). This figure gives the county-specific base premium rates averaged across both irrigated and nonirrigated corn and the 6-h storm tracks for hurricanes relevant to our study that made landfall in the Mississippi Delta region over the period 2002–2021. We note the base premium rate is interpreted as the amount of actuarially fair premium paid per dollar of purchased liability. 

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Credit: U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture image

LITTLE ROCK — Farmers in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, pay four to six times more for crop insurance than their counterparts in the upper Midwest, and Hunter Biram wanted to know why.

It’s a question that’s been in Biram’s head since his dissertation days at Kansas State University.

Now a Ph.D. extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Biram, along with co-authors Cameron-Harp, agricultural economist, and Jesse Tack, professor of Agricultural Economics, both of Kansas State, have some answers.

The result of their research — Measuring the impact of hurricane incidence on agricultural production risk using insurance data — was published in late July in the field’s top journal, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

“I began to study the price of insurance crop insurance across the United States, and what I noticed was, there were vast differences in prices between what folks in the South and primarily the Mid-South would pay versus those in the upper Midwest,” he said. “One thing that I begin to think about and do some research on is what's different about the Mid-South?”

Biram began to delve into the differences in rates between Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi versus Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa and parts of Minnesota.

“I'm not saying that the rates in the Mid-South should match those of the Upper Midwest. But we're talking about rates that are 4, 5, 6 times higher than that of the Upper Midwest,” he said.

Biram said “there’s a 2-cent per $1 of liability rate in the Upper Midwest, where a similar situation in the Mid-South could be more like 15 or 16 cents per dollar of liability. There’s a significant difference.”

Hurricanes and production risks

“Obviously, everybody faces similar price volatility from global markets, things like the Russia and Ukraine conflict among others,” he said, “But one thing that’s unique in the Mid-South is the incidence of hurricanes. We’re so close to the gulf.”

Biram said that while hurricanes don’t explain everything, “I began to dig a little big deeper to find what portion of that price is going to be attributed to hurricane incidents. That’s what this study attempts to do: What is the impact of hurricanes on production risk.”

Production risk generally translates into crop insurance premium rates.

“While premium rates drove the question, it’s really more of a symptom,” he said.

While the Upper Midwest may weather tornadoes and the occasional derecho, the frequency and scope of damage are different than that of hurricanes.

Biram said he limited the study to named storms that made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi because they are “most likely make an impact on Arkansas.”

Crop insurance gaps

In 2021 alone, hurricanes caused $145 billion in property damage, making it the third most costly hurricane season and seventh to see 10 or more $1 billion-dollar events, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Between 2002 and 2021, the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi experienced 30 hurricanes and tropical storms. Several storms, degraded to tropical depressions, meandered their way across Arkansas, affecting areas not covered by a hurricane-specific insurance called HIP-WI.

HIP-WI or the Hurricane Insurance Protection – Wind Index endorsement, is offered by the Risk Management Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There’s also an add-on that covers tropical storms.

The full value of the HIP-WI Endorsement is paid if a county, or adjacent county, is within the area of sustained hurricane-force winds from a named hurricane based on data published by the NHC.

However, in Arkansas the eligible counties are bounded by the Louisiana border to the south, Union County to the west, up through Cleveland and Jefferson counties, with Lee and Monroe counties being the northernmost of the eligible counties in Arkansas.

Above and below the eligibility line

“We’ve shown that the portion of hurricane incidence is, for the most part, not too different from above the HIP-WI eligibility line as it is below,” Biram said.

Looking at wind and water damage to four crops: corn, cotton, rice and soybeans, “the portion of the base premium rate attributable to hurricane damage is greatest in counties closer to the coast and then typically decays moving inland, which is expected as hurricane systems lose power as they move inland,” the researchers wrote.

“There are counties in northeast Arkansas that are higher than parts of Louisiana — especially in the case of cotton. It’s very clear in cotton and in soybean but not so much in rice and corn,’’ Biram said.

“The proportion of the rate can be quite large reaching a high of 92 percent for cotton and 42 percent for soybeans,” Biram said. “The impacts for rice and corn are much smaller with highs of 29 percent and 9 percent respectively.”

Cotton tends to be vulnerable because boll formation and opening happen during hurricane season. Cotton and soybeans are less likely to incur prevented planting losses which are more prevalent in corn and rice.

“I think the next step would be to visit with the Risk Management Agency and other policy makers to find a way to help farmers in northeast Arkansas manage hurricane risk. I know it sounds interesting to think that we need to manage hurricane risk in northeast Arkansas,” Biram said.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.

About the Division of Agriculture

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system. 

The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three campuses.  

Pursuant to 7 CFR § 15.3, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services (including employment) without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual preference, pregnancy or any other legally protected status, and is an equal opportunity institution.

 

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Media contact: Mary Hightower

mhightower@uada.edu

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Journal

American Journal of Agricultural Economics

DOI

10.1111/ajae.70008 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Measuring the impact of hurricane incidence on agricultural production risk using insurance data

 

Aston University data could improve how Uganda uses its stocks of biomass

Aston University

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EBRI researcher Dan Abudu

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Credit: Dan Abudu

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• Aston University data could improve how Uganda uses its stocks of biomass
• Researchers have been mapping forest biomass - renewable organic material from plants and animals
• They discussed their findings at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) week.

New data from Aston University researchers could improve how Uganda uses its stocks of biomass. 

Experts at the University’s Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute have been mapping forest biomass - renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals – and its availability and community-level energy demand. 

As a result, they have identified areas where demand exceeds supply, where it is balanced or where there is a surplus. This information helps pinpoint where interventions such as tree planting or cooking methods that use cleaner fuels and more efficient stoves are most urgently needed instead of applying the existing one-size-fits-all approach.

Currently in Uganda existing statistics or research methods use data aggregated at a national level. However, the Aston University researchers have developed a real-time dashboard for monitoring biomass, carbon stocks and energy demand at a local level. This allows them to produce more accurate estimates of biomass stocks specific for each community rather than relying on country-wide averages. 

EBRI researcher Dan Abudu presented the findings at the conference  held in the Ugandan capital Kampala in July. 

He said: “Our approach has enabled us to recommend targeted interventions rather than relying on generalised, country-wide solutions. This kind of targeting can help avoid wasting money on interventions in areas that may not need them or are already managing well. 

“Over time, this could save millions of Uganda shillings by preventing deforestation and reducing the cost of future energy crises. While we have not quantified the exact financial savings yet, better data means smarter decisions and more efficient use of limited resources.”

The event hosted by the Ugandan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development brought together global representatives to discuss current trends, future opportunities and challenges of bioenergy development in Africa. The University’s research impact fund which aims to help shape regional strategies across the continent provided support so the University could co-organise the week’s flagship event.

The research team has since met with Uganda’s Ministry of Energy and the East African Centre of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Efficiency (EACREEE) which asked them to contribute to their baseline strategy meeting on regional clean energy transition. 

Dan added: “We’ve also had interest from Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) who are advising Uganda’s government on clean cooking and have expressed interests in our models and data outputs.

“Our research aligns well with Uganda’s Parish Development Model, which aims to drive development from the grassroots. Our analysis helps align forest and energy planning with this model, ensuring that resources, technologies and support are directed where they are needed most.

“We hope our research may soon influence not just local planning in Uganda, but also wider East African strategies around sustainable energy and forest management.”

 

New study highlights critical communication challenges in European biodiversity research networks

Pensoft Publishers

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A new study published in June reveals that fragmented communication and coordination undermine the effectiveness of Europe's leading biodiversity research infrastructures (BioRIs). The research led by Allan T. Souza, Tomáš Martinovič, Carrie Andrew, Yi-Ming Gan, and Erik Kusch, examined the communication strategies of four major European BioRIs, uncovering issues that hinder scientific collaboration and data integration across the continent.

BioRIs address the complex challenges in biodiversity research, scientific collaboration across disciplines and national boundaries, and inform the public and policymakers about the status and challenges of the European biodiversity. The new study focusing on the communication and coordination amongst BioRIs revealed issues in communication strategies of the key European BioRIs, including DiSSCo, eLTER, GBIF and LifeWatch ERIC. 

The study revealed uneven geographical representation, inconsistent communication practices, and limited data and service cohesion, ultimately impeding collaboration and efficient resource use. The distribution of BioRIs across Europe is imbalanced, leading to unequal research opportunities and capacities between regions. While communication within individual BioRIs is often strong, collaboration between infrastructures remains limited. The absence of shared tools and standard communication channels severely hampers joint efforts and information flow. The study found no standardised approach to communication methods among BioRIs, creating confusion for stakeholders and reducing transparency and accessibility for scientists, policymakers, and the public. Variations in data standards across infrastructures hinder data integration. While some infrastructures share common standards, others maintain highly specialised protocols, restricting broader collaboration and data use. Although some initiatives show promise for harmonisation, broader systemic challenges persist.

"Our findings highlight a critical need for a unified communication framework to break down barriers between these infrastructures," said lead author Allan T. Souza. "Without it, we risk missing opportunities for impactful, cross-disciplinary research vital to tackling Europe’s and the world’s biodiversity challenges." While some initiatives to tackle this issue demonstrate the potential for harmonisation, the broader systemic challenges persist.

To overcome these barriers, the study argues for these urgent steps. The first one recommends a standardised communication framework. Creating a shared platform with tools for chat, mailing, discussion boards, calendars, and clear public and internal information separation. Another recommendation is to increase geographical coverage that proposes long-term balancing of BioRI representation across Europe through coordinated funding and capacity sharing. The authors also suggest promoting data interoperability, while harmonising standards and deepening understanding of cross-domain differences to improve integration. And last but not least, it is important to leverage good practice examples.

Addressing fragmentation within European BioRIs requires improving communication, coordination, and interoperability through both technical and institutional measures. Strategic funding, shared platforms, and community engagement will be key to building a more integrated and efficient research network. The study highlights that changes should be gradual, systematic, and informed by proven models of collaboration.

 

Research article:

Souza A, Martinovič T, Andrew C, Gan Y-M, Kusch E (2025) Fragmented Networks: Challenges in communication and cohesion of European Biodiversity Research Infrastructures. Biodiversity Data Journal 13: e148079. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.13.e148079

 

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Journal

Biodiversity Data Journal

DOI

10.3897/BDJ.13.e148079 

Article Title

Fragmented Networks: Challenges in communication and cohesion of European Biodiversity Research Infrastructures