The 6% Rule: Why Energy Affordability Has a Hard Line (and What Happens Past It)
Quick Answers
Who set this 6% standard?
It traces to Fisher, Sheehan and Colton's Home Energy Affordability Gap Analysis and is now the standard threshold used across DOE's LEAD Tool and most ACEEE research.
What happens at 10%?
10% or more is classified as a 'severe energy burden,' a category currently carried by roughly two in five low-income U.S. households.
Is this threshold the same everywhere?
The percentage threshold is applied nationally, but actual dollar costs behind it vary hugely by state rate, home efficiency, and climate.
Where the number comes from
The logic runs: an affordable housing cost is no more than 30% of income, and about 20% of that housing allocation should reasonably go to energy — producing 6% of total income as the resulting energy affordability line.
What crossing it actually means
Research consistently links high energy burden to real trade-offs — forgoing food or medicine, keeping a home at an unsafe temperature, or falling behind on other bills.
Where you personally stand
The CCM Energy Score's burden calculation applies this same 6%/10% framework directly to your own income and bills, rather than a national abstraction.
Want to see where you personally stand? Check your own CCM Energy Score, free and takes under a minute.