Residential segregation and summertime air temperature across 13 northeastern U.S. states: potential implications for energy burden

• Published in: Environmental research letters 2024-08, Vol.19 (8), p.84005
• Main Authors: Carrión, Daniel, Rush, Johnathan, Colicino, Elena, Just, Allan C
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air temperature; Bowing; Climate change; Cooling; disparities; Energy demand; energy insecurity; environmental justice; extreme heat; High temperature; Hispanic Americans; Households; Regression analysis; Regression models; Residential energy; Segregation; Space cooling (buildings); Subgroups; Summer; Temperature; White people
• ISSN: 1748-9326; 1748-9326
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad5b77

High ambient summertime temperatures are an increasing health concern with climate change. This is a particular concern for minoritized households in the United States, for which differential energy burden may compromise adaptive capacity to high temperatures. Our research question was: Do minoritized groups experience hotter summers than the area average, and do non-Hispanic white people experience cooler summers? Using a fine-scaled spatiotemporal air temperature model and U.S. census data, we examined local (within-county) differences in warm season cooling degree days (CDDs) by ethnoracial group as a proxy for local energy demand for space cooling across states of the northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S. in 2003-2019. Using state-specific regression models adjusted for year and county, we found that Black and Latino people consistently experienced more CDDs, non-Hispanic white people experienced fewer CDDs, and Asian populations showed mixed results. We also explored a concentration-based measure of residential segregation for each ethnoracial group as one possible pathway towards temperature disparities. We included the segregation measure as a smooth term in a regression model adjusted for county and year. The results were nonlinear, but higher concentrations of white people were associated with lower annual CDDs and higher concentrations of Latino people were associated with higher annual CDDs than the county average. Concentrations for Black and Asian people were nonmonotonic, sometimes with bowed associations. These findings suggest that present-day residential segregation, as modeled by spatially smoothed ethnoracial subgroup concentrations, may contribute to summertime air temperature disparities and influence adaptive capacity. We hope these findings can support place-based interventions, including targeting of energy insecurity relief programs.