Heating bills to be about 10% higher this winter (unless you heat with wood)

Heating bills to be about 10% higher this winter

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last Update: 10:21 AM ET Oct 9, 2007

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Colder temperatures and higher fuel prices will force U.S. households to pay about 10%, or $88, more to heat their homes this winter, the Energy Department said Tuesday in its monthly short-term outlook.
The government expects temperatures in the lower 48 states to be about 4% colder than last year, but 2% warmer than the long-run average. Prices for all common fuels are expected to be higher than last year.

Households in the Northeast will be hit hardest. About a third of homes in the Northeast are heated with heating oil, the most expensive fuel. In addition, the Northeast pays the highest prices for natural gas, propane and electricity.

For 103 million households, heating bills are expected to average $977 for the six-month heating season, compared with $889 last year.
Fuel expenditures for individual households depend largely on local weather conditions, the local market, the size and efficiency of homes and their heating equipment, and thermostat settings, the government agency said.

Most households use natural gas for heating. Those 59 million households can be expected to pay $891 to heat their homes, up $78, or 9.5%, from last year.
The 31 million households that use electric heat will pay about $855 this winter, up $32, or 4%.
The 8 million households that use heating oil can expect to pay $1,785 this winter, up $319, or 22%.
The 5 million households that use propane will pay about $1,570 this winter, up $221, or 16%.

Meanwhile, gasoline prices are expected to be slightly higher next summer, rising to $2.97 per gallon on average compared with an average of $2.93 this past summer.

BeGreen said:

Given that oil futures are running about 30% higher than last year, I'm surprised the prediction is only for 10%. As for temps, heating here started mid-September this year. So far this has been a poopy fall for us, cold and damp.

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Only 8 million households heat with oil (they are getting hit the hardest). Most people heat with natural gas, and even though nat gas prices have been volatile, they are currently not much changed from last year's average:
http://www.wtrg.com/daily/gasprice.html

I expect nat gas prices to rise if we get the colder winter that is being forecast. The poor folks still heating with oil are probably going to continue getting squeezed harder every year.

Most people don't realize how little waste a modern nuclear power plant generates. As mentioned - in most cases the waste is simply stored on site, there is not even any need to transport it. The spent fuel rods are so small they sometimes have trouble finding them when they need to account for them.

I agree, we need to build more nuclear power plants. Plutonium is NOT an unlimited resource, but there's an awful lot of it to be mined, it can get us over the hump to the next great power source. The more that goes into power production, the less there is for nuclear weapons. Eventually solar power will be viable and we'll switch to that, long before we run out of radioactive isotopes.

KeithO- YES! Also some big new modern houses are poorly insulated (sloppy construction). My friend has a nice new house, should be extremely well insulated, he paid a lot of extra $ for the tyvek wrap. Well his heating bill were always outrageous. And what do you know, when his son slammed the front door back into and through the drywall, he discovered cold air pouring through that hole. Turns out that even though he has 6 inch studs, the builder used 4 inch insulation! There is a wide open gap between the inside drywall, and the insulation in the wall, and guess what's at the top of this huge gap? Soffit vents, of course! So cold air pours right down into the house, its like having no insulation at all.


Newtown - just curious, where is your parents house located?