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Highlights Bibliometrics offer a useful tool to uncover evolving patterns of U.S. energy burden. Issues of equity, race and justice are increasingly linked to energy burden. High energy burdens exacerbate health problems. Forecast that arrearages and stress of bill repayments will be prolonged by Covid-19.

In an era of U.S. energy abundance, the persistently high energy bills paid by low-income households is troubling. After decades of weatherization and bill-payment programs, low-income households still spend a higher percent of their income on electricity and gas bills than any other income group. Their energy burden is not declining, and it remains persistently high in particular geographies such as the South, rural America, and minority communities. As public agencies and utilities attempt to transition to a sustainable energy future, many of the programs that promote energy efficiency, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and home batteries are largely inaccessible to low-income households due to affordability barriers. This review describes the ecosystem of stakeholders and programs, and identifies promising opportunities to address low-income energy affordability, such as behavioral economics, data analytics, and leveraging health care benefits. Scalable approaches require linking programs and policies to tackle the complex web of causes and impacts faced by financially constrained households. Prog. Energy 2 (2020) 042003 M A Brown et alNumerous clean energy programs fail tests of distributive justice, including many energy-efficiency programs, special rates for electric vehicles, and net metering of rooftop solar installations. Such programs are typically paid for in part by low-income ratepayers who do not receive commensurate benefits Huessy 2018, Carley et al 2018). Intergenerational equityIntergenerational equity adds a time dimension to the equity discussion by considering community obligations to future generations. Actions that serve to increase rather than limit the development options of future generations can be said to improve intergenerational equity (Norton 2005). In the field of clean energy, intergenerational equity frequently involves deliberating which aspects of the present should be maintained or changed for future generations (Williams-Rajee 2015). Most clean energy programs do work to reduce CO 2 emissions and as a result, contribute positively to intergenerational equity in some ways. How these programs may impact the social and economic contours of communities across generations has received much less emphasis. The context: multiple stakeholders in the low-income housing marketNumerous decision-makers and stakeholders influence the energy integrity of low-income housing. This highly fragmented affordable housing market challenges efforts to improve low-income energy affordability. Government agencies have administrative and regulatory roles that influence each of these stakeholders to varying degrees. In terms of word counts, energy utilities are mentioned most often in the abstracts of the 183 publications examined in this review. Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based groups are also key stakeholders based on this tally. At the other extreme, the terms 'building manager' and 'property manager' do not appear in the 183 abstracts, and 'landlord' and 'property ow...

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