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Average home heating costs are expected to rise dramatically this winter as the effects of inflation under Joe Biden dent America’s wallets.
Americans will have to pay $177, about 17 percent, more to heat their homes compared to last winter’s prices, according to the National Energy Assistant Directors Association.
This is the highest price homeowners will have to pay in more than 10 years and the second year in a row that a significant price increase is expected, rising more than 35 percent since 2020.
Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University, said some of the drastic price increases can be attributed to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Wagner says that reliance on oil, coal and gas means Americans will be exposed to price fluctuations caused by external factors.
US homeowners pay an estimated $177, about 17 percent more for heating than last winter
Biden administration aims to tackle skyrocketing prices with Inflation Reduction Act, which will provide tax cuts for ‘new energy-efficient homes’
The Inflation Reduction Act’ is heralded by the White House as the ‘most aggressive action to address the climate crisis in US history’
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has a lot to do with this, not just. There are many other factors that come into play,” Wagner said Fox Weather.
“As long as we depend on commodities, such as oil, coal and especially gas in this case, to heat our homes or power our economy, we will be vulnerable to their price volatility,” he said.
Wagner believes the only way to rid Americans of high heating bills is to get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels.
“The answer is, and has been for a long time, to get rid of fossil fuels,” Wagner said. “We live in inflationary times.”
The Biden administration is aiming to tackle skyrocketing prices with the Inflation Reduction Act, which the White House considers the “most aggressive action to address the climate crisis in US history.”
While the bill covers many areas of the rising inflationary crisis, the government wants to tackle high heating bills by extending “tax credits for energy-efficient commercial buildings and new energy-efficient homes.”
Countering the high prices of fossil fuels will require “a lot of investment, which is exactly where the Inflation Reduction Act comes in,” Wagner said.
Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University, says the most important way to combat rising energy costs is to reduce reliance on fossil fuels
Mark Wolfe, the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said “the rise in home energy costs this winter will put millions of lower-income families at risk.”
Unfortunately, the immediate effects of rising costs will be felt most strongly in lower-income households, according to a statement from NEADA Director Mark Wolfe.
“With the rise in home energy costs this winter, millions of low-income families will be at risk of falling behind on their energy bills and having no choice but to make tough decisions between paying for food, medicine and rent,” Wolfe said. .
Earlier this month, NEADA sent a letter to Congress requesting $5 billion to help supplement the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to help cover the high costs of home heating.
According to the program’s website, the program aims to “keep families safe and healthy through initiatives that help families with energy costs.”
Wagner says how much we cool our homes in the summer is directly related to how much it will cost to heat our homes in the winter.
‘Our electricity grid runs partly on natural gas. If we burn more natural gas in the summer to cover peak power from extreme heat, that also contributes to higher natural gas prices in the winter,” Wagner says.
He says the power grid in the US needs to be decarbonised to kick-start the cost reduction process, along with insulating homes to reduce the need for heating in the winter.
‘The ultimate solution to fossil inflation is to move away from fossil fuels. It’s about investing in alternative fuels’, he concludes.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says inflation will ‘definitely’ fall NEXT YEAR – but denies US is in recession because labor market is so ‘tight’
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that inflation will “definitely” fall next year, but denied that the country was in recession because the labor market is so “tight”.
“A full-scale recession is a period of excessive unemployment. You don’t have a strong job market,” Yellen said during a performance at the Atlantic Festival in Washington. “We really do have one of the tightest labor markets we’ve had in American history.”
Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic asked her if inflation would be under control by the end of next year — or if it could become a theme in the 2024 presidential election.
“I believe it will get there, definitely next year,” she told Brownstein. “Let’s be clear that there are risks.”
The example she gave was either: Russian President Vladimir Putin continued his attack on Ukraine.
“I think it will be better,” she said. “Maybe we’ll get through next year, but I certainly expect inflation to come down.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that inflation will “definitely” fall next year, but denied that the country was in recession because the labor market is so “tight”.
Janet Yellen (right) was asked by Ron Brownstein (left) of the Atlantic if inflation would be under control by the end of next year — or if it could become a theme in the 2024 presidential election
At the height of her appearance, she recognized how troublesome inflation had become.
“First let me say that I think inflation has been unacceptably high,” she said. “It’s a huge problem for every American household. It creates a great sense of economic uncertainty for Americans. And we don’t want it to become endemic.’
Yellen, 76, then recalled her own experience of living in the 1970s.
“It’s President Biden’s top economic priority to get it down, and that’s what the Fed is trying to do,” she said.
She blames inflation on a number of things.
The bottlenecks in the supply chain related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“And Putin’s totally unacceptable, immoral war against Ukraine has led to an increase in the energy and food crisis that also contributes to inflation,” she added.
Yellen said the government has taken steps to ease supply chains and release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
‘But we also have a very tight labor market,’ she says.
“Right now we have two job openings for every unemployed worker, and I think that puts inflationary pressures in the system,” she later explained.
She also said she believed there was a way to lower inflation without cutting wages for workers.
“Now I believe there is a path that can succeed in curbing inflation while maintaining what I believe we would all consider a strong labor market,” Yellen said.