Exactly a year ago, as the devastating Camp Fire swept through the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, Frank A. Funes Jr., a disabled 69-year-old Vietnam veteran, woke in the early morning hours to a phone call. It was his pastor, checking to see if he had evacuated. Immediately, Funes looked outside his window: His neighbor’s house was already burning, and the flames were licking at his own fence. He, his wife and their 4-year-old grandson rushed out the door. “I didn’t have time to grab anything,” he said. “The wind was blowing like crazy, and the fire was just right around the house.”

That day, Funes lost the house he had lived in for the last seven years. He has since found a new home 15 miles away. But the winds are a constant reminder of how vulnerable he and his neighbors are to wildfires. Already this year in Northern California, the Kincade Fire has burned nearly 78,000 acres and destroyed 174 homes. Now, whenever the gusts kick up, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the region’s largest utility provider, pre-emptively cuts power to decrease the likelihood of a sparked transmission line starting a fire, as happened with last year’s Camp Fire. These shutoffs could last through the rest of November and for the foreseeable future, and Funes, like many others, feels helpless without electricity.

When PG&E shut off power in early October, 2.1 million people lost electricity. Amid the darkness and confusion of the next two days, residents caught a glimpse of what researchers call “the climate gap.” Those with solar panels, and more importantly, solar battery storage, fared pretty well during the outages. Tesla electric-car owners, some of whom had home solar systems, boasted about making pizzas in the midst of the blackout, while others watched movies in their parked cars. Meanwhile, those with more limited means ended up buying expensive and polluting gas-powered generators at prices ranging from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars. Many people, including some who rely on food stamps, were forced to throw out spoiled food. Those with medical disabilities — like Funes, who uses an electric wheelchair — worried about how long the outage would last and how much it would cost to keep the generator running. Just moving the generator in and out of storage was a physical challenge for him and his wife.

The state already has a plan in place to help remedy this disparity. In 2017, California designated funding to help disadvantaged residents and community organizations access new technology like solar batteries, through its Self Generation Incentive Program’s Equity Budget. It sounds like the perfect solution, one that by 2019, had accrued $72 million. The problem is, for residents, not one installation has taken place.

FOR YEARS, SO-CALLED “EARLY ADOPTERS” — people who buy things like electric vehicles or install solar panels on their roofs — have been rewarded with rebates. But people who cannot afford the upfront costs miss out on the savings and new technology. As a result, by the end of 2017, solar panels were three times as likely to be found outside of disadvantaged communities, per capita, than in them, according to “Distributed Solar and Environmental Justice,” a research study conducted by Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE). Meanwhile, low-income residents pay significantly more for electricity than early adopters do. That’s partly because a larger portion of their paychecks goes to energy costs, says Boris Lukanov, a senior scientist with PSE and the lead author of the study — about 7.2% of a low-income family’s paycheck, compared to the average of 3.5% that their more fortunate neighbors pay. But it’s also because in places like California, where solar adoption is high, the cost of moving electricity around the grid falls on those who use more power. That includes disadvantaged residents, whose housing infrastructure might not be the most energy-efficient and whose access to solar installations is limited, due to the high cost. Working-class communities often have the most to gain from sustainable energy, and not just for financial reasons: Low-income and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by high gas emissions.

Across the country, well-intentioned local and state governments hope to close that energy gap and assist their most disadvantaged residents through programs like the Equity Budget. But they keep running into problems. Stan Greschner, chief policy officer at GRID Alternatives, a nonprofit that works to make clean energy more accessible, said the reason is pretty simple: Low-income residents simply can’t afford any extra expenses. Even if a program like the Equity Budget covers half of the cost of a solar battery, the price is still too high for the struggling residents it’s trying to benefit. “If we don’t address the upfront cost barrier to adopting the technology, it will not reach low-income families, period,” Greschner said. “That was the biggest failure of the initial program.”