Energy costs for U.S. households will be almost double this year from 2001 although Utah residents haven't seen nearly the cost increases over the past decade as many of those living in the rest of the country.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a utility group that opposes increased limits on coal use, said this year more than half of American families, or those with annual incomes of less than $50,000, will be spending as much as 20 percent of their annual incomes for energy.

"For millions of Americans living on low and fixed incomes, surging energy prices mean less money for other necessities such as food, housing and health care," Steve Miller, president of the coalition said in a statement announcing the results of the group's study titled "Energy Cost Impacts on American Families."

Compared with the rest of the country, though, Utah families have been fortunate in terms of the increases they have been facing in their electricity and heating bills.

At a time when electricity rates were doubling nationally, power bills in Utah rose only 42 percent while the cost of heating a home with natural gas has trended downward and now costs the typical family living in the state 22 percent less than a decade ago.

"We've always been fortunate that our energy rates have trailed the national average," said Tim Funk of the Crossroads Urban Center, an organization that serves and represents the interest of low-income residents of the state. "But we also now have our power company — Rocky Mountain Power — telling us we're going to be in for annual rate increases for a good number of years. And that isn't going to help our low income families."

Funk said Utah's poor and low income families have been particularly hard hit by the weak economy. And he noted that many of the federal and state energy assistance programs that have helped families weather the economic storms of the past have been hit with cutbacks in funding or have seen their resources strained by increased demand from those in need.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy is using its findings to argue that newly finalized rules and pending EPA regulations on power companies that use coal to generate electricity threaten to push power costs even higher in the years ahead.

"New EPA regulations are making electricity and other energy sources unnecessarily expensive during a time of economic turmoil," Miller said.

Rocky Mountain Power, Utah's largest electric utility, already has been spending heavily on environmental upgrades to its plants in recent years, costs that it has had to pass on to its customers through higher rates. "We've added sulfur-dioxide controls, particulate filters and new burner technology that reduces emissions at many of our plants," said Dave Eskelsen, a spokesman for the company.

And the company will continue to make such investments in the future as the need arises, Eskelsen said.

About 62 percent of the electricity used in Utah is generated from burning coal, which is among the lowest cost sources four producing power.

Lisa Camooso Miller, vice president for media relations for the Washington-based coalition said the group's study is evidence that proposed increases in environmental regulations on coal-fired power plans are going to adversely impact the budgets of American families. "The problem with these new regulations — and we've only seen a third of them so far — is that they are going to be the most expensive ever to come out of the EPA."

The EPA, though, estimates that its air toxics and mercury regulations will cost utilities about $9.6 billion to comply and increase electricity costs about 3.1 percent.

But the coal coalition, in a separate study, estimated the EPA rules might raise costs 10 percent to 19 percent at times of peak demand.

"Lower-income families are more vulnerable to energy costs than higher-income families because energy represents a larger portion of their household budgets," according to the study, which relied on data from the Energy Information Administration.