Every Fuel you buy is going up— and getting harder to predict
Electricity, natural gas, and propane are all trending higher over the next two decades. More importantly for anyone running a facility, they’re getting more volatile — and the swings land hardest at the meter, on the delivered price a local site actually pays.
Electricity prices are headed up, not down
The long-run direction isn't ambiguous. Federal projections, four years of rate history, and the Northeast premium all point the same way.
Three forces pushing the price up
Demand is back
After a flat decade, load is climbing again — data centers, electrification, and EVs are pulling the whole curve up.
The grid needs rebuilding
Transmission, hardening, and interconnection costs are being spread across every bill, and that spend is front-loaded into the next twenty years.
Gas sets the price
In New England, natural-gas plants usually set the clearing price for power — so when gas moves, electricity follows it up.
And harder to predict
A rising average hides the real problem. For most of the year, delivered gas in New England tracks the national benchmark within pennies. Then a cold snap hits a constrained pipeline network, and the local price detaches from everything. This isn't a one-off — 2013/14, 2017/18, 2022, and 2023 have all produced their own spikes.
And if the site runs on propane, it's worse
Propane is a byproduct of gas processing and oil refining — supply can't flex quickly, so demand shocks translate straight into price. Roughly 60% of U.S. demand lands in the October-to-March window, and crop drying stacks a second seasonal spike onto heating. Rural and agricultural sites carry this exposure directly.
2013–14
Polar-vortex spike left Midwest farmers and grain elevators short on supply and paying steep premiums.
+30%
Within-season jump in the average U.S. residential propane price across the 2020–21 winter alone.
+49%
How much higher propane opened the 2021 heating season versus the year before — the priciest start since 2011.
The headline vs. the bill
Here's the part that matters for a real facility: the commodity price you read about is only a slice of what you pay. Delivery, transmission, basis, and public-benefit charges ride on top — and that's the part that's structurally climbing.
A quoted commodity rate is the number in the news. It is not the number on the invoice.
At a Connecticut site, more than half the delivered price is delivery, transmission, and public-benefit charges — the structural layer that keeps climbing regardless of where the commodity sits.
And the volatility rides on the same rails. A low national gas price offers zero protection to a New England facility in January, because the spike lives in the local delivered price, not the benchmark.
The ground doesn't spike
Fifteen feet down, the earth holds a steady temperature all year — through every cold snap, every basis blowout, every winter that detaches the local price from the national one.
A ground-source system draws heating and cooling from that stability instead of from a fuel you have to keep buying. And under Geothermal-as-a-Service, we own the system and you pay a fixed, known fee for the climate control itself — converting a volatile commodity purchase into a predictable line item you can actually plan around for the next twenty years.
Sources. U.S. Energy Information Administration — Annual Energy Outlook 2025, Short-Term Energy Outlook, Heating Oil & Propane Update, and state retail price data; ISO New England and NGI daily hub pricing (Algonquin Citygate, Henry Hub); EIA state-level residential and commercial rates for Connecticut and New England. Delivered-price breakdown is illustrative, based on Connecticut standard-service supply rates against typical all-in residential pricing; figures rounded. Prices are nominal.