NEW YORK – If heating your home was expensive last year, you might want to budget for more this winter – and possibly years to come.
The average cost of home heating is estimated to increase by $177 — roughly 17% — since last winter’s heating season, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects. It would mark the second consecutive year of substantial price rises and record-breaking prices.
According to NEADA data from 2020, the price of energy at home has increased by 35%.
“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has a lot to do with this, not exclusively. There are many other factors at play,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “As long as we are dependent on commodities, like oil, coal and especially gas in this case, to heat our homes or power our economy, we will be vulnerable to their price fluctuations.”
Wagner also notes that every time utility bills reach their highest, they go up.
“We live in inflationary times,”He stated.
Wagner believes that some of this is positive news when Wagner looks at how the economy has recovered from the effects of the pandemic quicker than expected. And a lot of it is bad news due to high and wildly fluctuating fossil fuel prices and the US’s dependence on them to heat homes and to drive the economy.
“The answer is, and has been for a long time, to get off fossil fuels,”Wagner,
The Inflation Reduction Act addresses this issue, appropriately naming it. It also addresses the US dependence on fossil fuels. “fossilflation”– the fact that much of the current inflation is due to rising fossil fuel prices.
“It takes a lot of investment, which is precisely where the Inflation Reduction Act comes in,”He stated.
According to Mark Wolfe (executive director of NEADA), however, lower income households will be hit the most by the increased costs.
“The rise in home energy costs this winter will put millions of lower-income families at risk of falling behind on their energy bills and having no choice but to make difficult decisions between paying for food, medicine and rent,”Wolfe made the statement in writing.
In a letter to Congress, the NEADA asked for a $5 million supplemental increase to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It requested this to pay for the rising cost of heating and cooling homes due to summer heat waves. Both are connected.
“Our electric grid, in part, runs on natural gas. If we burn more natural gas over the summer to cover peak electricity because of extreme heat, that, too, contributes to higher natural gas prices in the winter,”Wagner,
Wagner believes that the only way to reduce the rising cost of fossil fuel prices is to get off them. However, it is not an easy task.
“The ultimate fix for fossilflation is getting off fossil fuels. It’s about investing in alternative fuels,”He stated.
It’s also about the practical steps that people can do help lower their heating bills.
“That begins with insulating homes,”Wagner, “The second step: electrify everything.”
But electrifying alone doesn’t do it all either, as America’s electricity supply comes from fossil fuels. Wagner also stated that the electric grid must be decarbonized.
“That’s the third crucial step here,”He stated.
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