Direct household expenditures on energy—including electricity, gas and other heating fuels, amortized residential solar systems, and retail purchases of gasoline and public EV charging—are a key measure of energy affordability. To distinguish total expenditures across fuels from electricity bills and account for fuel-switching opportunities, we refer to this metric as a household’s Energy Wallet.
This report presents a straightforward calculation of the Energy Wallet metric describing total direct energy expenditures by households and how it evolves over time, in particular as a result of electrification trends. Additional follow-on analysis will leverage EPRI’s modeling tools to explore electrification trade-offs and provide a more detailed accounting of non-energy costs of end-use technologies, both in aggregate and at the level of individual representative households; economy-wide energy service costs including non-household energy purchases (which are embedded in household purchases of many goods and services, such as air travel); and distributional implications of household energy costs for affordability.