Now, electricity prices are surging in addition to all of the uncorked demand from the Covid-19 pandemic, when the global economic slowdown and pressure from policymakers kept a lid on utility bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if we were to repeat this analysis for next year, there would probably be a little bit of an uptick this year, but the data that I\u2019m looking at doesn\u2019t suggest a really significant increase in the historical context,\u201d said Geoffrey Blanford, the lead author of EPRI\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
But there isn\u2019t just one story unfolding across the country.<\/p>\n
The US has a particularly chaotic energy system. How much people pay to light their homes, stay warm, and get around varies a lot from state to state and even among neighbors. For example, Texas households tend to spend a larger share of their budgets on keeping their pickup trucks running, while families in Massachusetts spend a greater portion on staying warm.<\/p>\n
So, no\u2014we\u2019re not in an energy crisis, but it\u2019s unlikely that your power bills will come down anytime soon. There is some good news though: In the years ahead, Americans are actually poised to spend a smaller share of their incomes on energy overall as technology makes it more cost-effective to shift away from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our forward-looking scenarios, one of the key drivers for change is electrification, particularly light-duty vehicles,\u201d Blanford said. \u201cThis tends to actually reduce the energy wallet in real terms per household over time even as you\u2019re spending more on electricity.\u201d Though electric car sales have slowed down<\/a> in the US, they are still rolling into more driveways. And as homes and appliances become more efficient, that will help reduce energy bills as well. Based on current trends, the average US household energy wallet will shrink by 36 percent by 2050, with state-level declines anywhere from 10 to 50 percent, according to the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, electricity prices are surging in addition to all of the uncorked demand from the Covid-19 pandemic, when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,1687,5037,1872,192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-201683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-climate-desk","11":"tag-energy","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}