More Mainers are choosing to warm their homes using propane and electricity — but heating oil is still the top option despite it being an unpopular choice in the rest of the country.
The number of Mainers heating their homes using electricity, like installing heat pumps, ticked up by more than 4% in 2020 to 2024 compared with the previous period, recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows.
Meanwhile, the number of residents using gas heat rose by 3% during that time. Today, roughly a fifth of Mainers use gas heat, either from a utility line or stored in tanks.
Another nearly 9% of Mainers use wood to heat their homes while less than 1% use solar energy.
The data reveals how Mainers are choosing new ways to stay warm through the winters, perhaps because technology has advanced enough to rival time-honored heating methods. The switch could also indicate Mainers’ desire to cut costs as the prices of utilities — among other necessities — continue to rise.
While heating fuel prices have relaxed significantly since their record spike in 2022, they are still higher now than before the pandemic. On average, heating oil cost around $3.55 per gallon while propane hovered around $3.35 per gallon as of last week, according to the Maine Department of Energy Resources.
That means filling a 275-gallon tank with heating oil would cost about $976, whereas buying that much propane would cost roughly $921.
Electricity costs have also risen statewide to reach 27 cents per kilowatt hour, the Department of Energy Resources said.
Charlie Summers, president and CEO of the Maine Energy Marketers Association in Brunswick, said he has seen more Mainers turning to other heating methods in recent years, sometimes in an effort to save money or for environmental reasons.
“But, Maine is still a state where seven in 10 homes use liquid fuels for heat,” Summers said.
The most noticeable shifts appeared in Franklin, Oxford and Sagadahoc counties, where the percentage of people using electric heat doubled in 2020 to 2024 compared with the 4-years prior, Census data shows.
Electric heat is most popular in Cumberland County, as more than 14% of households use it now whereas less than 8% of residents chose it before 2020, according to Census data.
Efficiency Maine, a quasi-state agency that offers energy efficiency programs, estimates that Mainers have installed more than 200,000 heat pumps in the past decade, according to Kate Rankin, communications director for the Efficiency Maine Trust.
Their growing popularity could be linked to the fact that a singular system can both heat and cool a home, Rankin said.
“[Mainers] like that heat pumps cost less to operate than systems that run on propane, oil, or kerosene, and that the electricity used to power heat pumps does not have to be imported from overseas or the other side of the country,” Rankin said.
Hancock County has the highest percentage of residents using gas heat at nearly 22% whereas roughly 16% of homes relied on it previously.
Despite the change, more than half of Maine households — roughly 55% — still use heating oil, whereas more than 61% of the state relied on it in 2019.
Liquid fuel likely remains the most pervasive heat source because it’s easy to transport, it’s effective, and heating oil and furnaces have improved to become more efficient over time, Summers said.
“The liquid fuel delivery system is mature and very intricate, and that’s something that Mainers appreciate,” Summers said. “Liquid fuels are tested, reliable and certainly as economical as any other option, if not more so.”
That’s a stark difference from the rest of the country, where at least 40 percent of the population uses either gas or electric heating methods while less than 4% of the nation uses heating oil.
Even among New England states, Mainers are most reliant on heating oil. New Hampshire comes the closest as nearly 40% of its residents use oil whereas slightly more than that use gas, either from a utility line or from a tank.
It’s likely that some Mainers use more than one heat source at a time when temperatures dip into single digits or below zero, Summers said.
“Someone might not only have a boiler, but they might have a heat pump and one of those electric radiators you plug in,” Summers said. “Rural areas of the state might use four or five sources to get through the winter.”