Financial assistance also is available for qualifying consumers. Additional state energy assistance and fuel fund programs may be available to help households during a winter emergency . Weathering the High Cost of Heating Your Home , a Federal Trade Commission site that offers advice on how to reduce home heating bills. When the price of one fuel rises relative to another, it may make sense to consider switching. Some industries that use large quantities of energy equip their operations so fuel changes can be made quickly and easily.
Homeowners face more of a challenge.
Typically, homes in the Northeast have had the choice of electricity and heating oil, while people in most of the rest of the country have selected natural gas or electricity. However, with the expansion of gas transmission networks, more and more residents of the Northeast now can consider natural gas as a residential fuel choice. The graph shows how the prices per Btu of the three most popular types of residential heating sources have changed over the last 20 years. In the 1970s natural gas offered a clear price advantage over electricity and heating oil because natural gas was under federal price controls. Since 1981, the price difference between heating oil and natural gas on a Btu basis has narrowed considerably, whereas the gap between these fuels and electricity has remained about the same.