Save Your Energy: the Impacts of Indoor Energy Use on Our Health

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Contributors: Nobi Kennedy, Wyatt King, Kelly Morton, Bamidele Osamika, Leah Ross, Mitch Singstock, and Savannah Sullivan
This piece is part of Green Umbrella’s 2024 PSA Campaign on climate health impacts, highlighting a recent report done with Scioto Analysis which was supported in part by a bi3, HealthPath, and Interact for Health Data for Equity Grant.

Energy use is a significant driver of greenhouse gasses and climate change, impacting our ecosystems, infrastructure, and health in compounding ways. Picture a snowball rolling down a snowy hill: it grows larger the farther it falls, accelerates in unpredictable ways, and destabilizes the area around it. Just as a simple snowball can become an avalanche, greenhouse gas emissions escalate climate change, causing cascading effects including strains on infrastructure, energy network disruptions, and risks to human health and safety. 

While energy use contributes to global warming at large, it can also have negative effects even closer to home. When created through oil, gas, or coal combustion, household energy – used for heating and cooling, cooking, hot water, and more – is directly detrimental to occupant health.

Health Effects from Energy Use

Common household appliances – such as stoves, furnaces, dryers, and others – that use gas, wood, or coal as their energy source release particulate matter into the indoor air. Particulate matter can consist of pollutants like carbon, ammonium, metals, formaldehyde, nitrates, and sulfates. These pollutants can lodge deep in our lungs, causing or exacerbating diseases like asthma, COPD, heart attacks, and stroke. Children living in households that use gas stoves for cooking are 42% more likely to have asthma.

The build-up of particulate matter within the home can lead to poor indoor air quality. Poor air quality is bad for all occupants but disproportionately affects the health of those who spend most of their time indoors, renters who don’t have control over their landlords’ and fellow occupants’ energy choices, and those who live in low-income housing spaces. Those in low-income housing communities also experience higher levels of fuel poverty – when more than 10% of a household’s income is spent on energy. Fuel poverty can take a toll on mental health and comfort within their own homes. 

Since 1973, summer electricity consumption in the average American home has nearly doubled, primarily due to rising regional temperatures and erratic weather patterns that increase the need for indoor climate control. Our Tri-State area of Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio uses coal and natural gas combustion as primary energy sources, demonstrating our region’s urgent need for clean energy infrastructure and our increased exposure to indoor air pollution.

Indoors, Outside the Home

Indoor air quality isn’t just an issue in our homes; it affects health and well-being in any building where people spend significant amounts of time, including workplaces, schools, hospitals, restaurants, and public facilities. Buildings that are energy efficient and have effective ventilation systems help protect the health and well-being of their occupants. Retrofitting existing buildings to become more efficient improves physical health, decreases heat-related illness, and prevents excess winter mortality. 

Reducing Your Risk – What You Can Do Right Now

Know What You’re Using

The greenest, healthiest, and least expensive energy is the energy you don’t use! Conserving  energy and using energy efficiently are the best places to focus your initial efforts on reducing energy risk. Being conscious about your energy usage can help you become more aware of how to conserve it. Start by reviewing your monthly energy bills to see how much and when you use energy in your home. Compare current bills to past ones to see how your consumption patterns change. Remember – comparing a July bill to a December bill won’t be as useful as comparing months with similar weather and temperature conditions.

Reduce What You’re Using

Once you have a better grasp on your energy use habits, it will be easier to reduce your footprint. Are you a night owl? Try going to bed earlier, turning the lights off and the heat down. Big foodie? Challenge yourself by cooking one-pot meals (bonus points: cook only with appliances that use electricity rather than natural gas!). Love being cozy? Put on a snuggly sweater before turning up the heat. Reducing your energy consumption is a great way to improve your home’s air quality – and save money! 

Replace What You’re Using

For those with the resources and freedom to do so, replacing your home’s existing gas, oil, or coal-burning appliances is the best way to improve your internal air quality and save money. For example, when replacing your appliances, choose an electric heat pump over a natural gas furnace and an induction cooktop stove over a gas-fired range. Not all replacements have to be big: smaller investments, like a clothesline for line-drying your laundry instead of using a dryer, can make a big difference (and your clothes will last longer!). 

Many consumers may qualify for federal, state, or local subsidies or tax incentives that can help defray the costs of upgrading to cleaner appliances. Resources for switching to clean energy can be found at the end of this post. Don’t be afraid to talk about the money you’ve saved and the air quality you’ve improved after switching up your habits and appliances: providing an example may encourage your friends and family to take the next steps on their clean energy journey.  

Driving Change in Our Region

Large impact on a regional scale is possible, and change is happening now!

A Network Committed to Energy Reduction

The Cincinnati 2030 District*, facilitated by Green Umbrella, is a collaborative effort to create a network of healthy, sustainable, and high-performing buildings in the City of Cincinnati. Participating members make a collective commitment to reduce their buildings’ energy use, water consumption, and transportation emissions by 50% by the year 2030 – saving money and improving community and occupant health at the same time. Since its inception, the Cincinnati 2030 District has accumulated 321 participating buildings, accounting for 28.2 million square feet, and reported a 31.5% reduction in energy use; a 31.3% reduction in water consumption; and a 20.8% reduction in transportation emissions. 

Solar Energy in Cincinnati

The City of Cincinnati is working towards using more clean energy and plans to use 100% clean power in its facilities by 2035. In addition to 4.4MW of solar installed across 36 facilities, the City is involved in the 100MW New Market Solar array in Highland County – one of the largest city-established solar array projects in the country. The power generated will be used for City facilities and residents participating in the City’s electric aggregation program, reducing the region’s carbon emissions by 158,000 tons annually. 

Focusing on Equity

WarmUp Cincy was a 2023 pilot program designed to combat fuel poverty, prevent utility disconnection, and increase energy efficiency for renters and owners in Cincinnati’s 16 most energy-burdened neighborhoods. The results were positive; the next step is making energy efficiency upgrades to buildings within the existing Over-the-Rhine Community Housing (OTRCH) portfolio to benefit tenants, the organization, and the environment. 

Energy Efficiency Standards

In 2023, the University of Cincinnati was awarded a $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a 3-year project to create a new, cost-efficient approach to Building Performance Energy Standards, which address the energy efficiency of existing buildings. After the new standards are developed, they will be implemented in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Cleveland. 

These initiatives are great steps on the road to healthier, cleaner living, but there’s more to do throughout the region. You can be a leader for change by advocating for switching community buildings to clean energy and making development codes more sustainable; supporting research and reductions in the amount of energy that public buildings use; and talking with your friends, family, and neighbors about ways to make healthy energy changes.

*The Cincinnati 2030 District is part of the 2030 Districts Network, a global network of districts committed to making meaningful changes within cities that address climate change.

National Support for Healthier Energy

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, Congress created new streams of federal support for energy efficiency and clean energy projects. These resources provide funding for projects that utilize clean energy, reduce emissions from buildings and transportation, and improve climate justice (see the Resources section of this post for more information). 

Learn More

Watch the recording of the second installment of the Climate Health Public Service Announcement Webinar Series, Energy, Climate Change, & Health Outcomes, on YouTube. Guest speakers include Molly Robertshaw – Sustainability Manager, City of Cincinnati, Office of Environment & Sustainability and Alison L. Knasin, Ph.D. – Energy Justice Lab Manager, University of Pennsylvania. This webinar was originally recorded on March 28, 2024.

Resources

Infographics – download and share!

More information

Inflation Reduction Act resources:

“It’s Not Just You”: the Impacts of Climate Change on Mental Health

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Contributors: Bailey Fullwiler, Nobi Kennedy, Kelly Morton, Bamidele Osamika, Leah Ross, Mitch Singstock, and Savannah Sullivan
This piece is part of Green Umbrella’s 2024 PSA Campaign on climate health impacts, highlighting a recent report done with Scioto Analysis which was supported in part by a bi3, HealthPath, and Interact for Health Data for Equity Grant.

The impact of climate change can be seen in a photograph – a neighborhood decimated by flooding, a field struck with dust and drought, eggs cooking on pavement during a heat wave – but an impact that isn’t easily captured in a snapshot is the toll climate change takes on mental health. 

Whether they’re the result of specific, climate-related events or ongoing, chronic conditions, mental health illnesses are triggered and compounded by climate change. With climate events occurring with more frequency, there is unfortunately more opportunity to study the social and psychological effects of climate trauma. But despite the challenges, there is hope: there are many things we can do as a community and as individuals to help mitigate how climate change impacts mental health.

Disasters & Depression

Acute climate events lead to increased rates of a wide range of negative mental health outcomes such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and major and persistent depressive disorders. Research from the American Public Health Association has found that up to 54% of adults and 45% of children suffer depression after a disaster. These might include events like tornadoes, landslides, extreme flooding, and more.

Long-term weather changes like droughts or heat waves also threaten people’s livelihoods. During the 1980s Farm Crisis, caused by economic policies and exacerbated by a record-breaking drought, over 900 farmers across the Midwest died by suicide. Farmers across Ohio continue to document among the highest rates of suicide across the state due in part to an uncertain future from climate change. These impacts are happening close to home and require urgent attention. 

Grieving for the Climate

Solastalgia is a feeling of distress caused by changes to or the loss of one’s home or land. It is also known as climate grief or ecological grief; those who experience this mourn the destruction of the environment – or they dread its seemingly imminent destruction. David Shearman, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Adelaide and co-founder of Doctors for the Environment Australia, described his own solastalgia in The Guardian, detailing recurring nightmares after the catastrophic 2019-2020 Australian bushfires: 

“I am walking in a forest overwhelmed by giant blackened trees and bushes contorted in the throes of death. In this graveyard, a thick covering of fine, white ash muffles all sound like snow, “and no birds sing”; the sun is shining but the sky is grey. I awake in distress and ruminate for hours on the implications and the many other climate and environmental portents.”

In national surveys, the majority of Americans state that they are worried about climate change, particularly in younger age groups. In a recent study, nearly 60% of 1,000 surveyed US adolescents reported anxiety about climate change, and nearly half believe that “humanity is doomed.” Climate change creates chronic stress, increasing feelings of hopelessness.

Rising Temperatures Raise Tension

Heat waves – abnormally high temperatures lasting at least two days – stretch every part of society, from straining electrical grids to exhausting social services and more. While cardiovascular events, heat stroke, and sun poisoning are clear signs of the increased heat, mental health too suffers as temperature rises. 

When heat waves increase, so do hospitalizations from mental illness. During extreme heat waves, depression symptoms worsen; aggressive behavior is exacerbated, leading to more incidences of crime and domestic violence; and the rate of suicide attempts and deaths increases. Higher temperatures means that quality of sleep suffers, leading to more acute mental illness symptoms. Some psychiatric medications’ effectiveness is reduced. Those with mental illness, who are more likely to live in poverty and/or have concurrent substance abuse issues, are often less able to make changes that help make the heat more bearable (staying indoors, utilizing air conditioning, swimming or taking cold showers, etc.)

As our region continues to warm, heat waves will become more common, increasing mental health emergencies in inequitable ways. 

All Is Not Lost: Practical Optimism

Despair toward climate change can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: as despair leads to inaction, inaction contributes to climate change. To combat climate grief, we can start by reframing the problem: addressing climate change is the opportunity of a lifetime. By transitioning to abundant, renewable energy, we can promote equity, save lives, and heal our planet. 

Don’t let the rough headlines deter you; we still have much to be optimistic about. For example: 

  • Technologies that support climate efforts like electric vehicles, solar panels, and heat pumps are becoming better, cheaper, and more accessible than ever. 
  • The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 became the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history (so far!), offering millions of dollars in funding, tax credits, and other incentives to drive a green-energy economy. 
  • At the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) in 2023, delegates agreed to create a loss and damage fund to support the nations most vulnerable to climate change.

As individuals, we can start by practicing hope. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, avoid the negative headlines and search for the good climate news – it’s out there, and there’s more of it every day.

Treating Climate Grief

Climate grief can be isolating, so it’s important to remember that you are not alone. Therapists can provide an excellent support system for navigating the daily and existential challenges of confronting climate change. Mental health professionals are increasingly trained to grapple with climate issues with their clients. That said, some providers may feel ill-prepared to discuss climate change with patients. If that’s the case, you can start by sharing how to incorporate resilience training and empowerment into mental health care with your existing or new provider. Care providers can also connect with the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America or other support groups to provide holistic climate-based mental health care. By focusing on climate change as a solvable problem, younger generations can learn to be hopeful instead of helpless. 

One of the best cures for climate grief is action, and it doesn’t have to be big! Start small with personal goals that feel achievable for your lifestyle. Using less plastic, driving less, eating less red meat, or writing to your local politician are all excellent first steps on your journey. Don’t try to change everything – like New Year’s resolutions, if you try to make too many new habits at once, you’re not going to stick with them. “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time!

We can anticipate a changing future by building more resilient, cohesive communities. By preparing for disasters, we can mitigate their effects and build community adaptation strategies through community engagement, affordable mental health care, and trauma-informed care following natural disasters. Community support networks lessen the chronic stress of climate change, especially for younger generations, and they’re a great way to improve your mental health around climate change. Become engaged with your sustainability community and connect with organizations like Green Umbrella, Keep Cincinnati Beautiful, Queen City Commons, Groundwork Ohio River Valley, Ohio River Foundation, the Boone Conservancy, or other great local organizations. 

You can also foster an online community to engage with others around climate change. Some options include Climate Circle, Climate Grief Groups, and Good Grief Network. Climate and Mind includes information on many climate organizations involved in mental health and details on mental health professionals who specialize in eco-anxiety and climate grief. 

It’s never too late to seek help for yourself and others. The Disaster Distress Helpline 1-800-985-5990, is a 24/7, 365-day-a-year, national hotline dedicated to providing immediate crisis counseling for people who are experiencing emotional distress related to any natural or human-caused disaster. (Disponible en español and available in ASL video call)

If you are struggling with suicidal ideation, call or send a text to 988. The 988 Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free, confidential emotional support to those in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. (Disponible en español and available in ASL video call) 

We’re In This Together

We can all support each other by discussing these issues and how they make us feel. Cultivate spaces, whether in-person or online, where you can be open and vulnerable. And, whenever possible, spend more time in the outdoor spaces that rejuvenate you. Taking breaks from social media, apps, and other anxieties of modern life will give your body and mind a rest. Engage in nature therapy, find peace in natural spaces, and build gratitude for our natural world and personal resilience. 

Learn More

Watch the recording of the first installment of the Climate Health Public Service Announcement Webinar Series, Changing Climate & Our Mental Health, on YouTube. Guest speakers include Dr. Nzingha Dalila EdD, LPCC-S, LCDC-III – Clinical Counselor and Clinical Instructor at University of Cincinnati and Bailey Fullwiler, MSSA, LSW – Ohio Regional Organizer at Climate Reality Project. This webinar was originally recorded on February 23, 2024.

Resources

Infographics – download and share!

Finding a Provider: 

  • The Climate Psychiatry Alliance – This organization provides articles, resources, and contact information for finding well-informed therapists.
  • International Community for Ecopsychology – This organization provides blog posts, research articles, and contact information for finding well-informed therapists.
  • Climate Psychology Alliance – This organization provides education for the general public and media on the intersection of climate change and mental health, offers cafe-style groups for supporting individuals, and hosts a climate-aware counselor directory.

Education and Peer Support:

  • Good Grief Network – This group offers support groups, education and training to help navigate feelings of loss and mental health distress around climate change and justice. 
  • All We Can Save – In addition to being a great collection of stories, this project also provides resources for understanding climate emotions, a model for creating circles of care, and guidance on how to integrate this knowledge into your personal and collective work.
  • Work That Reconnects Us – Based on the leadership and scholarship of Joanna Macy, this organization groups a wide directory of resources for somatic and cultural practices for navigating climate stressors; regular small group opportunities; webinars and training; and blog posts and podcasts.
  • Climate Awakening – This group offers support groups for climate emotions, regular publications/news articles, and a climate emotions self-help book.
  • Climate Mental Health Network – This group acts as a convener of climate mental health resources. They have a joint-published k-12 curriculum, creative arts for climate emotions, a gen-z advisory board, and regular events.

Book Recommendations:

Social Media Accounts to Follow: