Home heating costs to go up $1030 this winter

Christy Strawser (0:01)

The day's biggest stories, the people behind the headlines, the conversations you won't hear anywhere else.

I'm Christy Strawser, you're listening to Audacy's On Deadline. Fall isn't even officially here yet, and there's already bad news about winter utility bills. Here's Marty Griffith in Pittsburgh.

Marty Griffith (0:18)

Diesel is the highest ever right now, 631 It's an issue for Americans, a horrible mess for people. So with diesel at 631, there's this blowback, man, across the marketplace.

Truckers, farmers get spanked, you name it. So gas right now is 437 a gallon, the highest it ever was, 2,022 under Biden 501 Are we trying to break the record? Is that what we're here for? I don't give a damn who the president is. I give a damn about what's happening in the economy and what's going to do to heating oil, which is now screwing people big time. A guy sent me a note yesterday. Last year, his heating oil was about 800 a year. This year is going to be 1800 I mean, it's horrible. Chad Quinn from the Dollar Energy Fund. Good afternoon, brother. How are you?

Chad Quinn (1:03)

Good morning. How are you?

Marty Griffith (1:04)

Crazy confluence of pricing, heating oil, diesel fuel, all that stuff, and gasoline that's going to affect consumers. And you're going to see this, aren't you, sir?

Chad Quinn (1:15)

Yeah, Marty, I mean, let's talk about just household budgets. When gasoline prices go up, household budgets are certainly impacted, right?

Just by the fact that people are spending $150 extra on gasoline right now, then let's even go back maybe three, four years ago. That's expensive when you take 150 bucks on your budget. But the forecast the other day that the National Energy Assistance Directors Association talked about it's going to be $1,030 more this winter on average. To heat our homes than it was last year. $1,030 more, Marty. Now, your friend had talked about home heating oil. Home heating oil is up 31.3% year over year. So the number I saw on home heating oil is $2,297 to heat your home with home heating oil this year.

Those are big numbers. And when you add that to, listen, this isn't just an energy thing. When you add it to everything else becoming more expensive, it's hard for people to make ends meet and to get by. And that's what I'm worried about.

Marty Griffith (2:24)

Oh man, I'm kind of breathless here on that. A thousand more just this winter?

Chad Quinn (2:29)

Yeah, it's home heating costs this year are 8.7% increase year over year from last year. And listen, Marty, there's a lot of things going into that.

You could talk about geopolitical stuff around the world. We can talk about the Iran War. We could talk about regulation that happened in the previous administrations that maybe thwarted some natural gas exploration or growth of power plants. There's all kinds of things we could talk about. Here's my thing. There's plenty of blame to go around, whether it's on current administration, past administration, whoever you want. Who cares? Those things to me aren't important.

Marty Griffith (3:05)

Same, same.

Chad Quinn (3:06)

There's a lot of people that love the blame game, but I honestly don't care. What's going to matter, Marty, is the everyday average American who was able to get by last year has a thousand dollars less in their pocket just because of home energy costs. Take another, add another 100 bucks a month to their gas bill, their gasoline purchasing, so there's 1100 bucks. It costs more just because of energy related issues one year to the next.

Marty Griffith (3:33)

Chad has one of the coolest nonprofits I've ever seen, the Dollar Energy Fund. They help thousands of people in conjunction with the big companies, the big utility companies.

Chad Quinn (3:43)

Across the country, we helped about 200,000 families last year. And that number is continuing to grow.

Every year, in the past three years, we've done more. Like we share is going to be no different from what we just heard.

Marty Griffith (3:57)

Well, based on what you just said, it could be an all time record, right?

Chad Quinn (4:01)

It could be. You know, we was talking about it used to cost about 350 bucks for us to make a grant to pay someone to bill and get them through the winter time, get them back in the good graces of their utility and keep their service on.

We're budgeting a little over 400 this year, that it could take to get someone back together. When you multiply that difference of 60 or 70 bucks over over 25,000 people, that's real money that has to be spent year over year.