Before winter sets in, the Biden administration can cool heating prices

With temperatures dropping and energy prices rising, the forecast is for an expensive winter.

While the Biden administration scrambles to rein in inflation, a new energy efficiency standard for furnaces could provide long-term relief. The Department of Energy has proposed a rule that will phase out inefficient gas furnace models to help ensure homeowners and renters aren’t paying needlessly high bills. Improving the standards — which have not been meaningfully updated in more than 30 years — will lower gas bills and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change and cut air pollutants that cause poor health, especially in low-income communities. 

Nearly half of all U.S. homes are heated with a gas or propane furnace, and running one isn’t cheap. Households with a basic, non-condensing gas furnace face an average annual heating bill of nearly $700, and those who live in colder climates and in older, draftier homes can have much higher bills. High energy costs particularly strain low-income households, which pay a much larger share of their incomes on energy bills and who are disproportionately Black, Hispanic/Latino and Native American. Rising residential gas prices threaten to widen these disparities. 

The new standards could collectively save U.S. consumers more than $20 billion on home heating bills (over 30 years of furnace sales), meaning fewer consumers would be forced to make the impossible choice between paying for heat and other basic necessities such as food, rent and medicine. 

Gas furnaces are also a significant source of pollution that causes breathing disorders — such as asthma — which is more common among residents of low-income communities. Phasing out inefficient furnaces in favor of more efficient models — known as condensing furnaces — won’t just save consumers money, it will reduce pollution and improve health.

Many people have already made the switch to a more efficient condensing furnace, and about half of new purchases are now condensing models. But some homeowners must replace their failing furnaces in haste mid-winter without time to consider more efficient options — burdening themselves with higher bills for decades to come. And too many tenants end up with the least-efficient gas furnaces chosen by their landlord. Renters disproportionately have low incomes and have an even greater need for more efficient furnaces that can reduce their energy bills, but an inefficient furnace can saddle a tenant with higher energy bills for years. A strong updated standard will ensure that all new furnaces are more efficient.

For years, gas utilities have fought against standards that would reduce consumers’ bills — twice thwarting efforts by the Obama administration to raise the standards. But responsible utility companies are stepping up. National Grid and Eversource, two major utilities that serve millions of customers, are strong supporters of the proposed rule.

Phasing out the most inefficient furnaces would ease burdensome energy bills and help to achieve climate goals while also curbing the disproportionate health impacts of air pollutants on low-income communities. These communities have the fewest resources to address the harms of climate change that will disparately impact them. Improved furnace efficiency reduces greenhouse gas emissions and, as a result, is critical to decelerating climate change and saving lives.

Winter is coming, and without action from the Department of Energy to finalize the proposed furnace standards it’s going to cost a lot to stay warm for years to come. 

Berneta Haynes is a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center who focuses on consumer energy policy and medical debt.