Like the income gap, the energy gap poses significant public policy problems. Now that Americans have learned that fossil fuel energy, like all natural resources, is finite, they must consider distribution and pricing policies that will give all Americans a fair share of energy. Present maldistribution must be recognized, as well as the possibility of present and future shortages.

This chapter shows how poor, middle income, and well off families use energy. The poor use less; they pay higher prices for the energy they must have; and, more than any other group of Americans, they suffer from exposure to the noxious byproducts of energy consumption and production.

Energy use by the poor is almost entirely for essentials—space and water heating, cooking, food refrigeration, and lighting. When fuel supplies are limited and increasingly expensive, the wealthy can buy as much as they want, if price is the only obstacle. The poor, on the other hand, are inevitably deprived by rising costs. They are forced to forego some measure of pleasant or necessary life support—if not in heat and light or in gasoline for necessary transportation, then in the loss of amenities.

In 1972-73 poor households used an average of 207 million Btu's of natural gas, electricity and gasoline. The well off used more than twice as much. The middle income groups fell between. Figure 5-1 illustrates the stairstep pattern of energy consumption. The same stairstep pattern occurs for each fuel separately. The incline of the steps differs, however: as income rises, the increase in natural gas consumption is gradual, the increase in electricity is intermediate, and the increase in gasoline is sharp. The well off use almost one and one-half as much natural gas as the poor, over two and one-quarter as much electricity, and over five times as much gasoline. The well off use more of each than the middle income groups, but the differences are not as great, as Figure 5-1 shows.

Natural gas is used primarily for heating and cooking. It seems reasonable that, for these necessities, the less advantaged cannot reduce