Energy and Our Daily Lives
Energy Costs, Expenditures, and the Economy
What We Spend
Oregon spent $11.7 billion on energy in 2016 – the lowest amount since 2005. In 2018, Oregon spent $14.2 billion, with increases each year since 2016. This includes electricity and fuel for homes and businesses, industrial energy uses, and petroleum used in the transportation sector. Transportation accounts for more than half of our state’s energy expenditures and sees the largest swings in price. The variability in what we spend on energy is driven primarily by transportation fuel costs. Oregonians send about $5.4 billion of our transportation dollars to other states and countries where extraction, processing, and refining of transportation fuels occurs.
$14.2 billion
Oregonians spent on energy in 2018.
8.85 cents
Oregon’s average retail price per kilowatt hour of electricity in 2018.
Energy Burden
Home energy burden is the percent of household income spent on home energy bills. Energy bills include electricity, natural gas, and other home heating fuels, and are compared to the total income of the people in that household. If a household is spending greater than 6 percent of their income on home energy costs, they are considered burdened. The energy affordability gap is the difference between a household’s actual energy costs and an “affordable” energy burden level equal to six percent of the household’s income. With so many low-income Oregonians facing significant energy burden, Oregon’s energy affordability gap is estimated to be over $289 million per year, or eight times the federal funding Oregon receives for energy assistance.
3x
Nationally, low-income households spend three times more of their income on energy costs compared to the median spending of non low-income households.
33%
Percentage of all Oregon households that were energy burdened in 2019.
Energy Jobs
In 2019, about 6.8 million U.S. jobs (4.6 percent of Americans) were in the traditional energy and energy efficiency sectors. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, electric power generation employers across the U.S. projected 4.8 percent job growth in 2020. Potential energy job growth predictions were driven by strong employment growth in 2019 in natural gas (9.4 percent more jobs), solar (2.3 percent) and wind generation (3.2 percent), the fastest growing new sources of electricity. In Oregon, about 1.4 percent of the state’s employment is in the traditional energy sector.
COVID-19 Response and Effects on the Energy Sector
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the energy sector in many ways, both around the world and in Oregon. Because of COVID-19 we saw energy consumption behavior change quickly. For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that total national energy consumption in April 2020 was 14 percent lower than in April 2019, the lowest monthly energy consumption since 1989 and the largest year-over-year decrease since EIA began tracking this data in 1973. Trends in consumption varied substantially for different energy sources and for different sectors of the economy. U.S. petroleum consumption in April 2020 fell 27 percent compared to April 2019; and U.S. electricity consumption fell by 4 percent overall while residential electricity consumption rose by 8 percent due to more people staying home.