Hernández will write a book exploring families’ struggles to afford household energy. She will focus on energy insecurity – the inability to adequately meet household energy needs – a problem facing one in three U.S. households. She will analyze 100 in-depth interviews conducted across ten sites in the first study to examine the challenges that households face in accessing and affording electricity, natural gas, and fuel oils. Hernández will study how this issue varies across regions, including both urban and rural settings and cold and warm weather climates.