Cities across the U.S. are grappling with increasing climate risks, aging energy infrastructure and rising costs. With a limited sphere of influence due to financial and governance constraints, how can city leaders address related questions of energy affordability and resilience for their residents?
At Columbia Climate School’s “Cities, Energy Affordability and Climate Action” event, part of NYC Climate Week, sustainability leaders from Ann Arbor, Atlanta and New York City shared the ways they are working at the local level to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs, while also reflecting on the challenges they face. The program was hosted by the Climate School in partnership with the Climate & Sustainability Alumni Network.
Alexis Abramson, Climate School dean, opened the conversation with a central question: “How can cities make energy accessible and affordable when cities themselves do not control the energy system?” For low-income households in the U.S., she continued, energy costs can account for roughly three times as much of their incomes as they do for other households. “That’s not an abstraction; it’s the gap between a manageable bill and an impossible one,” said Abramson.
Despite the urgency of this problem, cities find themselves in a difficult position when it comes to addressing energy insecurity: “States regulate utilities, federal policies shape markets and utility companies own and operate much of the infrastructure,” Abramson said. What can cities do at the municipal level to address these growing gaps and build new capacity?
One approach, shared by Christopher Taylor, the mayor of Ann Arbor, is building a community-owned municipal utility. Taylor offered the audience his city’s context and a unique perspective on how and why Ann Arbor decided to launch its Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), an optional, and 100% renewable, supplemental power service that is layered on top of the state’s existing utility, at no upfront cost to residents.
Ann Arbor has a population of about 125,000 people, who have long been excited about what they can do in the fight against climate change, said Taylor, so when they saw an opportunity and received the funds to initiate action, they seized it. The question was: What was the best way forward?
Michigan does not have a public utility, but rather an investor-owned utility regulated by the state, he explained. As they tried to figure out the next steps for how to address the key areas of energy electrification and efficiency, Taylor said they first looked at full municipalization, or buying out the existing utility, but found this to be vastly expensive. State law, however, allows competition, so they devised the SEU, with the approval of roughly 80% of residents.
This program allows households to sign up for rooftop solar panels, an energy storage battery or a planned neighborhood-scale geothermal system, all of which are free to install as add-ons to existing utilities. The rates are currently competitive and reduce home energy costs compared with the existing utility alone, he said. About 100 homes are already connected in the Bryant neighborhood, where 75% of households qualify as low-income and over a third are energy-burdened, with connections to 125 homes planned by the end of 2026. The SEU will be rolled out citywide next year, with 1,000 customers anticipated in its first year, Taylor said.
But as Abramson said, there is no “one-size-fits-all model” in cities that “differ in governance structures, local circumstances and energy systems.” Leaders from Atlanta and New York took the stage next for a discussion with Sheila Foster, a legal scholar and professor of climate at the Columbia Climate School, about the energy choices, challenges and opportunities they are navigating in their communities.
Chandra Farley, Atlanta’s chief sustainability officer, said her background is in advocacy, and tackling the question of energy burden has been a career-long goal, from her time in nonprofit work to her current government role. Energy insecurity is often invisible, said Farley, so the first step has been helping people in Atlanta understand whether and how they are experiencing energy insecurity.
Annel Hernandez, New York City’s first-ever public utility advocate, said it’s important to remember that affordability and clean energy are not at odds with each other. “There are a lot of programs that can help New Yorkers… and a big part of what I’m doing is holding the utilities accountable,” she said, adding that these companies need to be doing more outreach and providing support to residents who are eligible for these opportunities.
As one example of her work, Hernandez referenced a recent rate case proceeding that asked whether a utility should be able to shut off power for nonpayment, and whether it can do so during an extreme heat event. “We were fighting to make sure that it wasn’t happening, not just the day of, but the day before and two days after an extreme heat event. You shouldn’t be afraid that your health is at risk during these events,” she said. According to a recent Con Edison report, nearly 200,000 people had their electric service disconnected in 2025, primarily in disadvantaged communities, noted Hernandez; as heat waves and extreme weather events become more frequent, these numbers are especially alarming.
Atlanta, on the other hand, is served by one of the most powerful utility companies in the country, said Foster, and the city has little formal say over its rates. “How have you been able to influence the utility, if at all?” she asked.
Farley said her office formally intervenes in Georgia Public Service Commission processes. “The Southeast Sustainability Directors Network has covered our attorney fees to participate in those cases,” Farley said. Some initiatives officials have focused on include resilience planning efforts, as well as working groups that have been vocal in shaping energy and community pilot programs; for example, they were able to intervene in a case reviewing senior discounts and ensured an increased reduction for senior constituents.
The city recently launched an initiative called WeatheRISE ATL, Farley said, “an energy burden reduction program focused on our most energy-burdened neighborhoods…the goal was to impact at minimum 200 homes with no-cost energy audits, and we were able to provide up to $6,000 towards that menu of opportunities” for each home. But she stressed that step one of this program was door-to-door canvassing and asking the residents directly what they needed. The community response so far to improving indoor air quality and indoor comfort has been very strong, Farley said.
Foster asked the panelists about the single largest barrier to doing more for their cities, given the local contexts.
The rapid utility rate increases continue to be a major obstacle in Atlanta, said Farley. From the time the program launched in 2024 until now, Georgia Power raised rates six times, so “the projections we were trying to make or the improvements that we made” were undercut. “There is just not enough money and capacity to keep up with those kinds of increases,” she said.
Hernandez said the largest barrier in New York City is “our aging grid and our aging building stock. It makes everything so much harder if we’re trying to interconnect a community solar project… or bring in battery storage.” The same goes for trying to make old buildings more energy efficient, she added. “It makes everything a lot more expensive. We can still overcome it, but it just makes everything more challenging.”
This conversation builds on the ongoing work at Columbia through Cities Uniting to Reduce Energy Insecurity (CUREi), which is led by Foster and Diana Hernández, associate professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and co-director of the Energy Opportunity Lab at the Center on Global Energy Policy. CUREi convenes researchers and city partners to look at energy insecurity holistically and examines how cities can better understand and reduce household energy insecurity. Read their recent report here.
