As winter approaches, Newton residents brace for higher utility bills.
“The last year and a half has been rough,” said Joana Gonçalves, a Newton resident and university student. She said she wears “layers and HeatTech so that we’re not blasting the heating at all hours.”
The Iran war has sent the price of oil soaring to all-time highs. Governor Maura Healey announced last month that Massachusetts is in a “state of energy emergency.”
More than half of households in Massachusetts rely on natural gas, and one in five houses in Massachusetts use heating oil. In Newton, around 10% of homes use heating oil or kerosene for heat, while 68% use natural gas and 15% use electricity.
Heating oil in Massachusetts this week is averaging $6.15 a gallon, a 69% increase over last year. Filling up an empty tank could cost $700 more than it did a year ago.
Electricity and natural gas prices have increased more modestly, by 2.6% and 12.8% respectively since last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Josue Tapia said he and his family just moved to Newton from Brazil and are trying to learn how to navigate a northeastern winter.
“We are planning to use foam tape to put on the windows to stop the draft coming inside the house, I guess as much as we can,” Tapia said. “We are using the heating only at specific times, in the morning and in the evening before we sleep.”
Geopolitics directly influence energy prices. The Iran war has disrupted the Strait of Hormuz, a global chokepoint for oil transportation, and the Russia-Ukraine war has reduced the output of Russian diesel.
“We’re in this situation because a foreign entanglement has caused these tremendous ripples in the global market for fossil fuels,” said Noah Berman, utility innovation program manager at the Acadia Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on energy and climate policy in New England.
Maureen Lemieux, Newton’s chief financial officer, said the city government has managed to evade these high prices. Newton is part of a consortium that bids out for gasoline, heating oil and diesel fuels.
Last year, bids for fuel were released a day before the Iran war started, leaving the prices at a much lower level than what is seen today.
This means that, for city purposes, energy prices are comparable to last year. The city expects to spend around 4% more than last year on energy, an amount Lemieux described as “very manageable.”
For residents, this means taxpayer money will not have to be redirected to cover excessive utility costs.
Phil Hanser, chair of the Newton Energy Commission, said the main vulnerable groups this winter are renters, because they can’t control the efficiency of their heating systems, and low-income households.
“The emergency is an affordability emergency,” Hanser said.
Michael Ferrante, president of the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association, agrees. “For low-income and middle-income families, this winter is going to be a struggle to pay their energy bills, put food on the table, and pay for the average things that we pay for every day,” he said.
Oil is a globally traded commodity whose price is largely influenced by geopolitics. Reducing the dependence on such volatile fuels can help reduce energy costs in the long term, Berman said.
“That’s the kind of volatility these cities and towns and homeowners are dealing with,” Ferrante said. “If you don’t have a regular arrangement with a retail heating oil dealer and you’re a regular customer, you just buy on a daily price, you’re going to be seeing these volatile swings through the winter.”
In the short term, Ferrante said consumers should look at making their systems as efficient as possible. If consumers improve their systems, less fuel is wasted.
Consumers can also turn to more efficient alternatives like heat pumps or natural gas furnaces.
These alternatives are often not an option for those in the most vulnerable groups, Hanser said, because of the high upfront costs of installing them.
As a response to her declared state of energy emergency, Healey announced a new home heating assistance benefit for around 50,000 middle-class households that rely on heating oil. These are households that did not previously qualify for assistance programs, which were also expanded to reach another 150,000 families in Massachusetts.
Newton residents can find fuel assistance information on the Newton government website, and can seek guidance from nonprofit organizations such as Action for Boston Community Development on direct assistance with paying heating bills.
****
This story is part of a partnership between the Newton Beacon and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom Initiative.