Citizens’ Socioeconomic Background and Energy Accessibility during Extreme Events

Climate change has led to an unprecedented increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves around the world. Excessive heat can result in life-threatening situations for citizens, especially seniors, children, and people with chronic illnesses. Therefore, it is vital that all citizens, especially vulnerable populations, have access to air conditioning or other cooling mechanisms during heat waves. This emphasizes the criticality of electrical infrastructure to save lives during these extreme events. Previous studies indicated that the existing infrastructure systems are not equitably serving all citizens due to unjust urban development. The first step to fundamentally transform the existing processes is to better understand the problem through evidence-based and data-driven methods. Therefore, this study aims to understand inequity issues related to citizens’ access to electricity during heat waves. More specifically, this study aims to empirically examine (1) whether there is a statistically significant association between citizens’ socioeconomic status and their exposure to excessive heat, and (2) if there is a statistically significant association between citizens’ socioeconomic status and the reliability of their access to electricity during heat waves. The outcomes of this study set the stage for equitable urban development and just infrastructure systems.