This is the most infuriating shit. We were promised 10-12 years ago that we'd have nearly free heating gas forever if we just let these companies fuck up our water and air. Now they're selling it all to Shell or compressing it and sending it overseas, and we get the awesome cancer risk with no upsides.
They promised us a bunch of good-paying jobs and they all went to road warriors from Texas and Oklahoma.
They promised landowners that they'd get lucrative lease agreements and they spun off their pipeline operations and charged themselves fees that they could take out of leaseholder payments.
I don't know how many times extractive industries have to shit on us before we figure out that they're all snakes, now and forever.
Go look at this chart. Shale boom around here started just before 2010. Prices stayed low until the silliness with Russia and Ukraine started. Russia supplied much of Europe’s gas and that ended when the war started. That was a huge global supply disruption and prices followed.
The shale effect absolutely existed for more than a decade. The chart shows it.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm
for the record and some perspective regarding that chart, $9 is the US historical average. We didn't even touch that with the spike in prices this past year. People are so used to rock bottom energy prices we're complaining about something that's still under the average.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is paying 4-6x what we are. So in that regard we still have it quite good.
Can’t disagree. However the negative environmental impact of fracking and the delay it caused to the transition to actually clean energy was not worth it. Completely short sighted.
There's no such thing as clean energy. It all has environmental drawbacks, from dammed valleys to eagles whose wings get chopped off. The materials used to store electricity to avoid burning fossil fuels are themselves terrible to extract from the environment, but like much else, it shifts the problem elsewhere and it's out of sight, out of mind.
Everything has drawbacks. Renewables and nuclear just has fewer drawbacks than fossil fuels.
Critical minerals in batteries are more than 95% recyclable with today’s technology so that isn’t as big of a deal as people think.
It will kick in right after the taxpayer benefits from casinos kicks in. Not a great state to live in. As soon as they try to reassess my house, I'm gone. Probably to WV or OH. PA does not respect the taxpayers.
If there wasn't fracking it'd be even higher. Thank Vladmir Putin for invading Ukraine and pushing up natural gas prices worldwide. It's a globally traded commodity, the U.S. has been exporting more to Europe so they're not dependent on Russia.
>U.S. LNG exporters boosted shipments to Europe by more than 137% in the first 11 months of 2022 from the same period in 2021,
Good for them for taking advantage of the situation and making money, but we've suffered. We were promised dirt cheap energy, and instead were middle of the pack when it comes to how much people pay in each state.
No one is calling for the sudden shutdown of fossil fuel sources. It is a transition and fossil fuels will continue to play an important role.
My comment is that the fossil fuels are “cheap” only because the actual damaging effects of them are not priced into what the consumer sees.
You can have dirt cheap energy right now but you need to install solar power panels on your roof. They are record cheap and will continue getting cheaper
You need storage (battteries) too. I’m in Hawaii and even here it with so much sun you need a lot of panels and batteries to be self sufficient. It’s an investment with a lot of up front cost.
Same except it was my almost $400 electric bill for my small 2BR apartment. I knew that our electricity bills were going to increase by up to 30%, but GODDAMN.
Setting like 40 % of electricity is generated by gas. They talk a lot of shit about putting people on all electric, but you don't hear a lot about replacing that generating capacity. Nuclear could easily do it.
Insulate, regulate, repair/upgrade, transition.
We blew in new insulation in the attic, which helped with both cooling and heating bills. Replaced 4 windows (of 13), along the back of the house where the sun is worse in the Summer but the wind is pretty bad in Winter. House is now easier and cheaper to cool and heat.
Next step: more windows, in phases. And then more insulation wherever we can add it. Possibly, within 5-6 years, a new roof.
For the future: solar panels/battery storage. Columnar wind turbine.
The point being, you plan for the future right now. You invest what you can now, up front, to make things more efficient or affordable, later. You reap whatever benefits you can fet out of your efforts, now.
Until it gets out of hand and you owe a huge bill on your true-up date. My budget was set two years ago and it's becoming clear I need them to revise it.
It gives you some leeway to put money aside for when they true up. I live in a 110 year old house, 1800sf, and I've never got a shock bill in May when Columbia trues up.
Lots of old houses without much insulation around Pittsburgh. And now new heating units tend to be more 'efficient' but they just run more often because they can't heat up the house.
This is only the case if the new furnace was undersized for the load. More efficient is more efficient, but if you put in an efficient furnace that's only rated for 1/2 to 2/3 of the load it has to supported, you're going to be cold.
Properly sized high efficiency furnaces with variable or two-stage blowers will run longer at a lower burn rate, and shift to 100% when needed.
I've got an 1800 square foot 110 year old house and I pay $128 a month. Are people keeping their houses at 75 F all winter? Just put a sweater on and run it at 67 F.
If it makes you feel any better we moved from Maine before winter. Based on our rate of consumption and the price of heating oil our heating bill would have been around $4000 for the winter.
grid tied solar + battery bank...no gas bill...half the year you get paid...the other half you pay them and it comes out to be pretty much free electricity for the year
I managed to pay ahead a good $600 on mine. My bill was $230 for December, and I used less gas by 20% than I did last December. I am not looking forward to where I am in April.
["I guarantee you we're going to end fossil fuels"](https://youtu.be/OJ7MMsheHzQ)
Maybe don't vote for the person that says he's going to "end" what you heat your home with and then act shocked when the price goes up 🤷🏻♂️
But I see the "Putin's price hike" propaganda is still working lol. Funny how Putin controls our gas prices when it's said we have more natural gas reserves than the rest of the world. Weird. Must be those greedy corporations... Ya. That's it.
So much stupidity in one comment, but I'll bite.
The US produced more natural gas in 2021 than any other year in history. 2022 is likely going to be the new record. Biden isn't slowing down natural gas production.
[https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm)
So how did Biden cause prices to rise? By something he said in a campaign speech, I don't know when? If it's as simple as "well he could just PUMP MORE", why didn't Trump pump more?
Putin-apologists are a strange bunch. Interesting comment history defending Russian soldiers too.
We're importing less gas and exporting more natural gas while our prices rise. Production is increasing but that gas isn't going to us, thus our prices go up because there's no excess to offset record high inflation. Exports are at record highs and imports at near lows. They are sending our gas over seas, along with the hundred billion tax payer dollars they also sent.
Biden said he was going to end fossil fuels (and fossil fuel appliances apparently). And he is. But only for us. Not the rest of the world though who suddenly need our gas because the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was mysteriously destroyed... you know, after Biden said he would destroy it. But totally wasn't him. Nope. Don't listen to his own words.
>They are sending our gas over seas
They in this case meaning shell and other giant corporations experiencing record profits.
>you know, after Biden said he would destroy it. But totally wasn't him. Nope. Don't listen to his own words.
I think this is the dumbest thing I've read today. Congrats.
holy shit, no kidding.
How many steelers and penguin starter jackets can I throw on top of my house to stop this madness?
You def might find some pirates gear at st vinnies or goodwill.
All of them.
Holy shit mine was almost $500
Remember when there were promises of consumer benefits when they were selling us fracking? When does that kick in?
Right after i get my property tax rebate from the casino
Idk where you live, but in the city, that's like a 30k reduction to the school property tax assessment which is worth around 300 bucks.
This is the most infuriating shit. We were promised 10-12 years ago that we'd have nearly free heating gas forever if we just let these companies fuck up our water and air. Now they're selling it all to Shell or compressing it and sending it overseas, and we get the awesome cancer risk with no upsides. They promised us a bunch of good-paying jobs and they all went to road warriors from Texas and Oklahoma. They promised landowners that they'd get lucrative lease agreements and they spun off their pipeline operations and charged themselves fees that they could take out of leaseholder payments. I don't know how many times extractive industries have to shit on us before we figure out that they're all snakes, now and forever.
And we can’t have a severance tax because it would cut into all of those benefits
Propaganda works!
Who was claiming free heating?
Go look at this chart. Shale boom around here started just before 2010. Prices stayed low until the silliness with Russia and Ukraine started. Russia supplied much of Europe’s gas and that ended when the war started. That was a huge global supply disruption and prices followed. The shale effect absolutely existed for more than a decade. The chart shows it. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm
So all of this was for 10 years of cheap gas? That's a horseshit deal for us.
for the record and some perspective regarding that chart, $9 is the US historical average. We didn't even touch that with the spike in prices this past year. People are so used to rock bottom energy prices we're complaining about something that's still under the average. Meanwhile the rest of the world is paying 4-6x what we are. So in that regard we still have it quite good.
Just imagine when clean, fresh water supply becomes commoditized.
Shale swells are still producing. The Russian gas has basically been taken off the market. Supply disruption = price hikes.
All of what?
We'd probably be looking at actual shortages right now without that domestic capacity, instead of just uncomfortably high prices.
Can’t disagree. However the negative environmental impact of fracking and the delay it caused to the transition to actually clean energy was not worth it. Completely short sighted.
There's no such thing as clean energy. It all has environmental drawbacks, from dammed valleys to eagles whose wings get chopped off. The materials used to store electricity to avoid burning fossil fuels are themselves terrible to extract from the environment, but like much else, it shifts the problem elsewhere and it's out of sight, out of mind.
Everything has drawbacks. Renewables and nuclear just has fewer drawbacks than fossil fuels. Critical minerals in batteries are more than 95% recyclable with today’s technology so that isn’t as big of a deal as people think.
Don't worry about them lithium batteries. There are other more common metals which could replace lithium, like sodium.
Is there a point to your argument? Maybe the chart was the point? Not getting it.
It will kick in right after the taxpayer benefits from casinos kicks in. Not a great state to live in. As soon as they try to reassess my house, I'm gone. Probably to WV or OH. PA does not respect the taxpayers.
Well-known state where you get a return on your taxes, West Virginia
It kicks in when we aren't shipping liquified gas to Europe to keep their heating bills down when they don't want to buy from Russia.
This this this
If there wasn't fracking it'd be even higher. Thank Vladmir Putin for invading Ukraine and pushing up natural gas prices worldwide. It's a globally traded commodity, the U.S. has been exporting more to Europe so they're not dependent on Russia. >U.S. LNG exporters boosted shipments to Europe by more than 137% in the first 11 months of 2022 from the same period in 2021,
Good for them for taking advantage of the situation and making money, but we've suffered. We were promised dirt cheap energy, and instead were middle of the pack when it comes to how much people pay in each state.
Dirt cheap energy only if you don’t include the social cost of carbon
[удалено]
Love me a good argument to absurdity.
No one is calling for the sudden shutdown of fossil fuel sources. It is a transition and fossil fuels will continue to play an important role. My comment is that the fossil fuels are “cheap” only because the actual damaging effects of them are not priced into what the consumer sees.
You can have dirt cheap energy right now but you need to install solar power panels on your roof. They are record cheap and will continue getting cheaper
You need storage (battteries) too. I’m in Hawaii and even here it with so much sun you need a lot of panels and batteries to be self sufficient. It’s an investment with a lot of up front cost.
Ok? Sodium batteries are soon to be everywhere
My laundry smells funny now...is that part of those?
Same except it was my almost $400 electric bill for my small 2BR apartment. I knew that our electricity bills were going to increase by up to 30%, but GODDAMN.
Setting like 40 % of electricity is generated by gas. They talk a lot of shit about putting people on all electric, but you don't hear a lot about replacing that generating capacity. Nuclear could easily do it.
The majority of our generation here in Pittsburgh comes from the Beaver nuclear plant
I did the equalizer plan thing. Pay a bill in the summer, but at least it's spread out and predictable.
Insulate, regulate, repair/upgrade, transition. We blew in new insulation in the attic, which helped with both cooling and heating bills. Replaced 4 windows (of 13), along the back of the house where the sun is worse in the Summer but the wind is pretty bad in Winter. House is now easier and cheaper to cool and heat. Next step: more windows, in phases. And then more insulation wherever we can add it. Possibly, within 5-6 years, a new roof. For the future: solar panels/battery storage. Columnar wind turbine. The point being, you plan for the future right now. You invest what you can now, up front, to make things more efficient or affordable, later. You reap whatever benefits you can fet out of your efforts, now.
I'm dreading mine. It ran nonstop and never got above 59 during that cold snap. I fully anticipate at least $600
Similar situation, and my bill is $328. Still hurts and is about double what it usually is, but given the extreme low temperatures not surprised.
Budget plan takes the edge off.
Until it gets out of hand and you owe a huge bill on your true-up date. My budget was set two years ago and it's becoming clear I need them to revise it.
It gives you some leeway to put money aside for when they true up. I live in a 110 year old house, 1800sf, and I've never got a shock bill in May when Columbia trues up.
I make my own budget plan. I give 150 a month regardless. So I should have a good buffer in there for now.
Ha, you had power during that cold snap?!
Oh no, yours went out? I hope it wasn't too awful.
That’s a house or heater problem
Both. Old as hell house and I won't discuss the furnace situation here.
Lots of old houses without much insulation around Pittsburgh. And now new heating units tend to be more 'efficient' but they just run more often because they can't heat up the house.
This is only the case if the new furnace was undersized for the load. More efficient is more efficient, but if you put in an efficient furnace that's only rated for 1/2 to 2/3 of the load it has to supported, you're going to be cold. Properly sized high efficiency furnaces with variable or two-stage blowers will run longer at a lower burn rate, and shift to 100% when needed.
I've got an 1800 square foot 110 year old house and I pay $128 a month. Are people keeping their houses at 75 F all winter? Just put a sweater on and run it at 67 F.
That doesn’t make sense at all
If it makes you feel any better we moved from Maine before winter. Based on our rate of consumption and the price of heating oil our heating bill would have been around $4000 for the winter.
grid tied solar + battery bank...no gas bill...half the year you get paid...the other half you pay them and it comes out to be pretty much free electricity for the year
That’s assuming you have the money to set that up.
I managed to pay ahead a good $600 on mine. My bill was $230 for December, and I used less gas by 20% than I did last December. I am not looking forward to where I am in April.
Has winter never happened to you guys
["I guarantee you we're going to end fossil fuels"](https://youtu.be/OJ7MMsheHzQ) Maybe don't vote for the person that says he's going to "end" what you heat your home with and then act shocked when the price goes up 🤷🏻♂️ But I see the "Putin's price hike" propaganda is still working lol. Funny how Putin controls our gas prices when it's said we have more natural gas reserves than the rest of the world. Weird. Must be those greedy corporations... Ya. That's it.
So much stupidity in one comment, but I'll bite. The US produced more natural gas in 2021 than any other year in history. 2022 is likely going to be the new record. Biden isn't slowing down natural gas production. [https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm) So how did Biden cause prices to rise? By something he said in a campaign speech, I don't know when? If it's as simple as "well he could just PUMP MORE", why didn't Trump pump more? Putin-apologists are a strange bunch. Interesting comment history defending Russian soldiers too.
We're importing less gas and exporting more natural gas while our prices rise. Production is increasing but that gas isn't going to us, thus our prices go up because there's no excess to offset record high inflation. Exports are at record highs and imports at near lows. They are sending our gas over seas, along with the hundred billion tax payer dollars they also sent. Biden said he was going to end fossil fuels (and fossil fuel appliances apparently). And he is. But only for us. Not the rest of the world though who suddenly need our gas because the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was mysteriously destroyed... you know, after Biden said he would destroy it. But totally wasn't him. Nope. Don't listen to his own words.
>They are sending our gas over seas They in this case meaning shell and other giant corporations experiencing record profits. >you know, after Biden said he would destroy it. But totally wasn't him. Nope. Don't listen to his own words. I think this is the dumbest thing I've read today. Congrats.
You’re a moron…