If you haven't started setting money aside for your heating bills this winter, it's time to start.
Experts are forecasting that the cost for heating oil could rise more than 40%, natural gas could shoot up 30%, propane, 54% and electricity, 6%.
If it's a bad winter, prices could go even higher, with propane costs doubling.
"Going forward this year, there are no signs of these prices coming down,” says Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.
Add to that, rising gasoline prices.
“We will have $ 4-gallon gasoline shortly, as long as demand stays like it is,” says economist Dan Celia.
The energy crisis is the result of several factors, including policy decisions by lawmakers. Some would say bad policy decisions.
“It's a perfect storm of increased global demand and low supply thanks in part to the pandemic and in part because of a war on fossil fuels in Washington,” says Dr. Marlo Lewis, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Now, all of a sudden, demand is coming back, but there isn't the supply to meet it.”
Energy experts are calling it "the revenge of old energy," – meaning the fossil fuel industry – which is being increasingly abandoned by investors because of the push among lawmakers for new green energy sources.
“Basically, this political movement has declared war on fossil fuels,” Dr. Lewis explains. “And a lot of people have concluded in the industry, and also people who are investors, that this sector has no future."
A worldwide energy crunch is also to blame. China has had rolling blackouts from an energy shortage and Europe has seen natural gas prices rise 350%. Energy experts say Europe is being forced to return to coal – a dirty word to environmentalists – to generate the power it needs. Even cheap, abundant, clean-burning natural gas has fallen out of favor because of a belief it causes climate change.
“We have more natural gas than any place on the earth,” says Celia. “But we don't even want to think about it because in the mentality of the Left, it's still a fossil fuel, and they don't want any part of it.
But while green energy may sound like a good idea to some, the world is will discover this winter just how much it still needs fossil fuels.
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