I live in New England and have a natural gas-fueled furnace. My heating bill was $290 last month. I suppose that if I replaced the furnace my heating costs would go down, but I can't afford the replacement right now.
Several stories out of Maine caught my attention this week.
The first was a blog entry The Maine Owl:
When they brought [newborn] Bryce home after Thanksgiving, there was no oil to run the furnace. McAlpine couldn’t find a heating oil company that would deliver fewer than 100 gallons, which would have cost the family more than $300 they didn’t have.
....
Christine, a 33-year-old working woman, wife and mother of three, this winter is having to choose between heating oil and medicine for her husband, who recently suffered a heart attack.
To keep the pipes from freezing at the family's Bangor home, which is in foreclosure, Christine has gone out nightly to fill up two 5-gallon tanks with heating oil or kerosene from a pump at a convenience store, "just to be able to have heat through the night." She’s forced to buy her oil daily because she can't afford to fill her 275-gallon tank, which would cost her around $600.
The second was an NPR story on landlord-tenant difficulties over heating costs.
Unable to keep their furnaces fueled, some landlords in Maine are abandoning their rental units and leaving tenants in the cold. On the flip side, some landlords are getting stiffed on rent by cash-strapped tenants choosing fuel and groceries as their priorities.
Listen to the whole story. Both sides are losing. Tenants can't afford to pitch in for heat in heat-included rental agreements. Landlord's are faced with not making mortgage payments if they pay for heat.
Also in Boston, heat a casualty in foreclosures.
Tenants in some foreclosed Boston apartment buildings are living without adequate heat because the new landlords - mortgage companies often based in other states - have not repaired broken systems or paid for the delivery of heating oil.
Karla Herrera, who gave birth to a daughter Wednesday, has lived without heat in her Roxbury apartment since November, when the system broke. "Sometimes, I turn on the oven for 20 minutes for heat," she said in Spanish, speaking through an interpreter.
There have been numerous stories about fires caused by electric space heaters in underheated apartments.
This is where the economic crunch hits the fan. This is where peak oil starts hurting.
What do you pay for heat each month?