The cost of natural-gas heating, in use by roughly half of U.S. households, was up about two and a half percent over last year’s
Natural Gas Heating Cost Trend heating season, but data from the nonprofit Local Energy in Santa Fe shows that the cost of heating with natural gas has been rising at an average rate of 12.6 percent per year for the last ten years. (See graph.) Heat from natural gas now costs more than $14 per million BTU, and total household expenditures for the fuel now exceed $60 billion per year in the U.S.

Local Energy estimates that if your gas comes from an investor owned utility, about 85 cents of every dollar you pay them leaves the community. With a locally owned utility, a lot more of the money collected would stay in the community where it would multiply, create jobs, and support independent energy producers.