BPT Share Prices vs Oil Prices

I've owned BPT shares for a while now.    With the plunge in oil prices the performance of BPT hasn't been pretty lately.

If I were to try to time the oil market (which I am not recommending), then I think that buying some BPT right now might be a good idea.   The shares are trading just under $29 as I write this.   If oil recovers, as its likely to eventually do, then BPT will go up.    BPT doesn't track oil exactly but its very close and the price goes up and down with oil.

To see how well BPT tracks oil I got the last 10 years worth of monthly prices and charted them together.

Here is the chart:

I used the monthly closing prices of BPT off Yahoo finance.  Note thats just the share price and does not account for dividends paid.
Crude oil prices are from the EIA and are the WTI Cushing, OK price.

I'm actually not thinking of doubling down on BPT right now and in fact I'm considering closing out my Roth IRA with Scottrade and transferring to Fidelity.
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Gasoline Price Component History 2000 to 2015

Gasoline should be cheaper than it is today.   It will likely fall further in the next few weeks.   Oil dropped from about $50 a barrel down to around $30 in the past 3 months.   That should cause gasoline to drop further than it has.    But theres some delay between gas price drops and drops at the pump due to the time to refine and distribute and then sell gas at retail.   We could see gas hit  around $1.50 level within a month.    Anyway... that line of thinking is what lead me to the information below.


EIA has a breakdown of the component prices of gasoline for refining, distribution, taxes and oil.

Here's a graphic :

(data source: EIA.gov ; click for full size)

Taxes are the only constant.   Refining and distribution bounce up and down a bit.   Oil is main factor that causes the larges swings in the retail prices.

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What Will Gasoline Prices Do In The Future?

A few months ago gasoline cost about $3.80 a gallon.   Then it dropped considerably over several months to hit a low price around $2.10.    Now gas has gone up again and peaked around $3 to then turn around and drop a bit.     It doesn't take much research to see that these price changes are a direct reflection in the cost of oil.   Oil has gone down a lot in the past 12 months.    But will oil go up or down in the next 12 months?   What about the next 5 years?  

yes, no, maybe.

We don't know what oil will do in the next year or ten years.   You can really only take guesses at this kind of thing.    But we might get a reasonable expectation for the cost of oil and hence the retail cost of gasoline by looking at the history of gasoline and oil prices.

Energy.gov has data on inflation adjusted gasoline prices.   I've charged the numbers from 1972 to 2013 here :

If you look at the first 30 year period in that chart from 1972 to 2002 the cost of oil started around $1.50 and ended around $1.50 (both in 2013 dollars).   I would conclude then that over the longer term in that 30 year period oil basically rose at the price of inflation.    Of course there is a 10 year period there in the 80's when oil shot up and then dropped.   Now in the more recent decade from 2002 to 2013 we see oil has again shot up in prices.   That more recent increase in price would seem a direct result of major conflicts in the middle east.  

Gasoline prices are volatile. 

In the past 40 years gasoline prices have risen over the long term at least as fast as the cost of inflation.    In the most recent decade gas has risen at a rate about 8% faster than inflation.   In individual years gas has risen or dropped as much as 25% above inflation.   In a 5 year period gas has gone up as much as 80% over inflation.

Generally I'd conclude that gasoline will go up at least as fast as inflation in the long term.  In shorter periods we could see gas go up or down 25% a year and even double in cost within a decade.
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Diesel versus Gas Prices

Lately I've been  seeing a very steep premium for diesel fuel prices over the cost of regular gasoline.    One of the pricier stations had regular for $2.25 and diesel for $2.95.   Thats a 31% premium.   Of course thats just one example.

I found historical prices from the EIA .    The most recent numbers as of Feb 2nd (as I write this) says that the national average for gas is $1.98  and $2.86 for diesel.     Thats a hefty 44% premium for diesel.   I the EIA data and pulled out just the prices from the first week of each month.   Below is the trend showing the difference in prices for diesel over gasoline :

The current difference is abnormally high.   You can see the large spike for the most recent data which is way off the chart compared to normal.   Usually the % difference is less than 20% but now its hit over 40%.   

You can also see that it varies seasonally.     I plotted monthly prices for a few years 1995 to 2000 to see how the difference varies month to month. 

 
Generally diesel is around 5-10% higher than gas in the winter and then drops to ~5% cheaper

Overall diesel averages about 6% higher than gasoline over the long run.     The mean and median are both 6%.


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Annual US Oil Production past 100 Years

The US is producing more and more oil.     I wondered if the number was hitting our previous peak yet.  

The government EIA site has data on annual production of oil up to 2013.

The following chart shows the production from 1913 to 2013.

As you can see we haven't returned to the peak production which was in 1970.     If however the production continues to go up at the rate it has since 2008 we might return to the 1970 level by 2019.     I doubt that will happen but its possible. 



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Fuel Prices Over Time 1979 to 2014

Home heating generally uses gas, electricity or oil.   The prices of those fuels go up at different rates.  (Or in the case of gas more recently goes down).   Lets look at how the prices have looked over the past 35 years.

I got the data from the BLS price indexes.   In the charts below I normalized the prices to 1979 = 1.0 and then adjusted from there.   The 1979 prices were :  Fuel oil was 0.728, electricity was .05 a KWH and gas was 31.8 for 100 therms.   Note the gas data only goes up to 2013.

Annual growth rates for the 34-35 year period are :

fuel oil = 4.8%
electricity = 2.9%
gas = 3.5%

Here are the charts :

(click image for full size)

You'll note that from 1979 to around 2000 that the prices generally grew at a more similar rate and then after 2000 the oil and gas prices jumped drastically.   So looking at just the most recent years :

(click image for full size)

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Gasoline prices are down 3.4% in the past 12 months

Its always news when the price of gas goes up.   Yet when gas drops in price it doesn't seem to generate front page headlines.   The Energy Information Administration tracks gasoline prices weekly.    As of 9/8 the national average is $3.534.    Last year on 9/9 it was $3.658.   Thats a drop of 3.4% in the past 12 months.    OK thats not much of a drop but its a drop all the same.


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How Common Is Natural Gas in Homes?

I saw someone on the internet talk about using natural gas as if every home must have it.   They seemed to take for granted that everyone would have gas service.   The home I grew up in only had electricity and had no access to natural gas or any other type of fuel (propane, fuel oil, etc).    It simply wasn't in the area.   The first home I built was the same deal, only electric.   My wifes home before we married (which is now a rental) is also all electric.   Both of those homes have natural gas available at the street but simply aren't hooked up.    Most places I've lived in my life were electricity only.   I think the dorms I lived in had steam heat boiler setup or something and I vaguely recall that a house I roomed in for a summer had gas.   So I'm on the other end of the perspective of not being very familiar with natural gas in homes.
 
How common are houses with only electricity?  How common is natural gas service really?

I previously talked about the form of heating in homes when I wrote What Do People Heat Their Homes With?  That mostly answers the question, but not exactly.   See you can actually have homes with gas service that don't have gas heat.   Its a minority of homes but a notable percent have gas but don't use gas heat.   I suppose its more common in warmer climates where heat isn't a big deal but they might like gas for cooking or such.

TO answer the question I pulled the data out of the 2011 American Housing Survey Table C-03-AH

The percent of homes with each type of fuel : 

Electricity	98.2%
Gas	67.5%
Fuel oil	8.3%
Others	3.1%

And homes with only electricity :

All electric units

29%

So the majority of homes at 67.5% do have natural gas but a sizable minority of homes 29% have only electricity.

Theres only a little difference between owner occupied and rental units.

Trivia bonus :  108 homes in the US have coal or coke fuel.   Yes ... coal.

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Residential Electricity Costs by State - 2014

I discussed this topic in 2011 but the numbers have changed since then.

Nationally electricity averages 12.41 cents per kWh.     I live in the Northwest and our electricity is relatively cheap here.     The US Energy Information Administration has state level averages on electric costs.   Note that these are just state level averages and your electric utility may charge more or less and your rates may vary depending on time of use or the amount of power you use.

Here's the list of all states for April 2014 :

Alabama	11.79
Alaska	19.03
Arizona	11.97
Arkansas	9.75
California	10.17
Colorado	12.19
Connecticut	19.87
Delaware	13.33
D.C.	13.16
Florida	11.76
Georgia	11.49
Hawaii	38.08
Idaho	9.55
Illinois	11.77
Indiana	11.9
Iowa	11.71
Kansas	12.62
Kentucky	10.72
Louisiana	10.12
Maine	15.38
Maryland	14.08
Massachusetts	18.19
Michigan	14.62
Minnesota	11.97
Mississippi	11.87
Missouri	10.55
Montana	9.98
Nebraska	10.14
Nevada	13.57
New Hampshire	17.54
New Jersey	15.72
New Mexico	11.82
New York	19.56
North Carolina	11.84
North Dakota	9.14
Ohio	12.4
Oklahoma	11.05
Oregon	10.37
Pennsylvania	13.12
Rhode Island	18.26
South Carolina	12.52
South Dakota	10.26
Tennessee	10.81
Texas	12.07
Utah	10.2
Vermont	18.07
Virginia	11.08
Washington	8.75
West Virginia	9.56
Wisconsin	13.77
Wyoming	10.24

The 5 cheapest states are :

Washington	8.75
North Dakota	9.14
Idaho	9.55
West Virginia	9.56
Arkansas	9.75

And the 5 most expensive are :

Hawaii	38.08
Connecticut	19.87
New York	19.56
Alaska	19.03
Rhode Island	18.26

Electricity is cheap in the Northwest due to large hydroelectric power installations such as Grand Coulee Dam.     Hawaii and Alaska have expensive power due to their remote locations and having to rely more on fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Now since I've got the numbers from 2011 and the newer 2014 numbers we can compare the changes.    Based on a 3 year period the compound annual growth of rates for each state are :

Alabama	2%
Alaska	3%
Arizona	3%
Arkansas	3%
California	-11%
Colorado	3%
Connecticut	3%
Delaware	-2%
District of Columbia	0%
Florida	0%
Georgia	2%
Hawaii	5%
Idaho	7%
Illinois	0%
Indiana	4%
Iowa	4%
Kansas	6%
Kentucky	5%
Louisiana	4%
Maine	0%
Maryland	0%
Massachusetts	8%
Michigan	5%
Minnesota	3%
Mississippi	3%
Missouri	4%
Montana	2%
Nebraska	4%
Nevada	4%
New Hampshire	2%
New Jersey	-1%
New Mexico	4%
New York	4%
North Carolina	4%
North Dakota	3%
Ohio	3%
Oklahoma	3%
Oregon	3%
Pennsylvania	-1%
Rhode Island	4%
South Carolina	3%
South Dakota	5%
Tennessee	3%
Texas	2%
Utah	6%
Vermont	3%
Virginia	2%
Washington	2%
West Virginia	0%
Wisconsin	2%
Wyoming	5%

The largest increases:

Massachusetts	8%
Idaho	7%
Utah	6%
Kansas	6%
Michigan	5%

And the smallest increases (which are actually decreases) :

California	-11%
Delaware	-2%
New Jersey	-1%
Pennsylvania	-1%
Illinois	-0.37%

So thats interesting that the rates dropped so much in California.    I haven't dug into that enough to find out why its down but I suspect its due to lower natural gas prices.   This report THE FUTURE OF ELECTRICITY PRICES IN CALIFORNIA points out that natural gas accounts for 60% of local CA electricity production and gas prices have been down in recent years.
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How Much Does It Cost To Leave Our Door Open in The Winter?

I have some frugal habits that are pretty ingrained in my personality.    One of the habits is not to leave the door open when its cold outside.   Sometimes I see people who do not always close a door quickly when it is cold out.    Anytime anyone has a door open for longer than a few minutes in the winter I start to get uncomfortable about it.      And 'uncomfortable' is the right word to use too, it kind of makes me a little upset to be honest.  Its almost as if someone just lit a $10 bill on fire for no reason.   But it has occurred to me that I don't really know how much heat this wastes.   I mean I know it wastes heat, that much is common sense, but I don't know HOW MUCH heat is wasted.  

There are frugal things that I do and don't do based specifically on how much they cost.   So if I"m going to get upset about an wasteful habit then I should really at least have an idea of how wasteful it is.   I mean if it wastes $1 in heat every time someone does this and they do it every other day then that is $15 wasted heat a month.   But if it only wastes 0.1¢ then I'm getting upset about nothing really.   So the actual cost is pretty important to keep things in perspective. 

I couldn't think of a good way to calculate the heat wasted on my own.   I searched Google and came up with a site that had done the math   (I'm not sure if that information is from Questline or Rocky Mountain Power or both).    They figured the amount of air that would move over an 8x10 opening based on different inside and outside temperatures.   I'll look at the example for 40F outside temperature since I live in the fairly mild Northwest US and that is a more common winter temperature average for us.

Their figures are based on natural gas at $1.20 a therm and an 80% efficient heater.    Our heat is a bit cheaper than that actually I figured that our heat would be about 75% of their costs.    So when they figure that an open 8x10 door would cost $1.88 an hour our cost would be more like $1.41.   Furthermore they are using an 8x10 door and our door is only about 3' x 8'.   Our door is only about 30% as large.   The $1.41 cost for a 8x10 door would be proportional to a 42¢ /hr cost for our 3x8 door.    Translate that into a per minute cost and you're looking at 0.7¢ per minute for our front door and our heating system.

Bottom Line : It probably costs only about 1¢ per minute to leave our front door open.

That seems surprisingly low to me.   Is this right?   Did I make a math error?    I'm seriously asking... Assuming its right, then thats not nearly as bad as I'd have thought.

This actually helps me feel better about it.   I am not going to get all bent out of shape if someone occasionally wastes a couple pennies by lingering at the front door.   

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What Do People Heat Their Homes With?

I've seen a couple comments on line lately from people who seemed to think everyone uses natural gas to heat their homes.     Natural gas is actually the most common home heating fuel source.   But there are still a lot of people in the nation who use other fuels.    Electricity is actually quite common in some regions as well as for rentals.

I found the data in the American Housing Survey for 2009 
The specific data is in table 2-5 for fuels.

For all homes the mix of heat sources are : 

I combined the smallest categories into an 'others' group.    The 'others' listed above includes kerosene, coal or coke, solar and other.



Natural gas is indeed the #1 form of home heat.  However its still only barely over half the homes and the other half are heated by electricity and other sources of heat.

The mix for owner occupied homes looks similar to the larger picture.

For renters the picture is a lot different.   Electricity is actually the winner with a fraction of a percent more homes than natural gas :

There are also pretty big differences between different regions of the country.  For each of the four major regions of the country I chart below the top 3 heat sources as well as the % heated by less popular energy.

Most notable are the use of fuel oil in the Northeast where nearly 1/3 of homes still use that : 

And then the popularity of electricity for heat in the South where it beats out gas for the #1 spot : 

The Midwest and West look similar to one another.   The pattern is closer to the national average but natural gas is even more popular out West.

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What do Carbon Offets Cost?

I personally have always liked energy efficiency.  I've generally only spent money on energy efficiency when it makes financial sense to do so.   But there is also a legitimate desire by some to reduce energy use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the good of the environment.   I mostly consider that a nice side benefit to my energy savings projects rather than my primary goal.

Carbon Offsets are one way you can achieve reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.     If your personal goal is to reduce CO2 production then buying carbon offsets can achieve that more practically than spending money on some low return energy efficiency improvements in your own home.

As an example to illustrate the idea : I could spend $10,000 on solar energy panels and save myself $200 a year in electricity.   That would end up cutting about 1/2 ton of CO2 emissions.    But a $200 return on $10k is not great.    So it doesn't really pay to do that unless my real goal is to save the environment.   Or I could put my $10,000 into paying down our mortgage and save $400 in interest and then spend $10 to buy a carbon offset to save more a full ton of CO2 in some other more effective CO2 reduction effort like a wind farm in the Dakotas.   I could even spend $200 on carbon offsets that reduce 20 times as many CO2 emissions.    (the numbers used here are rough but meant to be realistic)

So that lead in brings me to the topic:  What do carbon offsets cost and who sells them?
 
I'm only looking at the cost per ton of CO2.    I'm not looking into the quality of the projects or anything like that.  


I first researched some of the more popular carbon offset services and found prices on their web sites.
The costs per ton of CO2 I found are :

Nature Conservancy : $15 (tax deductible)

NativeEnergy.com at $14
CarbonFund.org at $10 (tax deductible)

TerraPass.com at $12

Then I came across an index of providers with prices per ton at CarbonCatalog.org   They list some organizations starting as low as $5.   I'd not hear of most of those companies but theres some real cheap prices out there.

The cheapest they list was : Versus-CO2.com  at just $2.75 per ton

Clearly theres a wide range in prices.    I've got $2.75 at the cheap end all the way up to $15.

However I wouldn't recommend simply signing up for the cheapest option without further research.  Its a good idea to verify the projects are certified and examine how exactly the companies are achieving their CO2 reductions to make sure you're really paying for projects that have a legitimate impact.

I should also point out that there is some debate about the effectiveness of carbon offsets.   I'd encourage individuals to investigate the idea fully and consider any criticism before buying them.  

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by quinn.anya
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Electricity Cost of Using a Kindle

I while ago someone on The Simple Dollar made a comment questioning the electricity usage of a Kindle.   At the time I thought to myself that a Kindle couldn't possibly use much electricity.   Small electronics like cell phones and tables and the like really don't use much power and their small batteries require little electricity to charge them.   But I like to have actual facts rather than just simple assumptions.    Therefore I set off to find out how much electricity a Kindle actually uses and how much the electricity it would cost to operate one.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is probably the worst case as far as Kindle models go.   It has color screen and a more powerful processor so it will use more electricity than the other models.   I'm going to just look at the Fire since its the worst case, the other simpler black and white models will be cheaper to operate.

The Kindle Fire has a battery with 16.28 Wh  capacity.   Thats 0.1628 kWh.   The average cost of a single kWh is about 11¢/.   Based on these numbers it would cost 0.17908¢ to charge the battery of a Kindle Fire.

You can charge the battery in a Kindle Fire 5.58 times for a single penny worth of electricity.


Amazon says that the Kindle Fire will last 8 hours of reading on a single charge.   One penny worth of electricity will get you 44.64 hours worth of reading on a Fire.

 An average book is approximately 70,000 words.   An average adult reads about 250 words a minute.

1 penny = 44.64 hours reading = 2678.4 minutes reading = 669,600 words = 9.565 books.

For the cost of 1 penny worth of electricity an average speed reader can read approximately 9 1/2 average size books on a Fire.

The Kindle Fire will also play movies and videos.    The Amazon specs say that the Fire will play 7.5 hours of video on a battery charge.   Nearly as much as the reading time on a single battery charge.

Since a penny of electricity will charge a Fire 5.58 times and a single charge will give you 7.5 hours of video you can get 41.85 hours of video playback on a Fire for 1 penny worth of electricity.

Of course all of these numbers are just averages and your mileage will vary. 

Bottom Line :  A Kindle is very cheap to operate and the electricity bill should be almost negligible.
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The Trend in Natural Gas Prices

I used to mull around the idea of changing my home furnace from electric to natural gas.   But then for several years gas prices kept going up and up while electricity wasn't increasing much at all.   I projected that trend into the future a few years and saw that it wouldn't take long before gas was not cheap enough to warrant a new furnace.   I mean if gas is 1/2 the cost of electricity today thats great but if gas doubles in price in 5 years then I wouldn't have saved much.   The price of natural gas has turned around in the past couple years.  Whether or not I should switch to natural gas to heat my home or power our appliances would depend on the future natural gas trends.   Given that, I should have some idea on the recent history and forecasted future of the price of natural gas.

Last year I wrote an article about the history of natural gas prices from 1967 to 2010.   You can see the trend there.   You can also look at the annual residential prices from EIA with latest data and you can see residential gas prices were going up steeply from 2000 to 2008.   In fact from 1999 to 2006 the price doubled which equates to 10% compound annual growth.  But also you can see there that prices have dropped about 20-25% for residential customer in the past 3 years or so.

Those were residential prices.   EIA has wellhead prices too which are at the producer side.  Well head prices have dropped in half in the past year.  In May 2011 it was $4.12 per 1000 cubic ft and by May 2012 it was down to 1.94.

There is of course a relationship between wellhead prices and residential prices but they don't move in lock step and change the same % at the same time.   Residential prices include fixed overhead costs and other factors that don't change based on the raw wellhead gas price.   Plus generally utilities don't and often can't simply raise or drop prices day to day.  The utility rates are often regulated by state agencies that have to approve price changes. We will probably see further residential price decreases as wellhead prices drop but its not going to be cut in half like the wellhead prices.


OK so natural gas prices were going up steeply for year over year for around a decade and then in the past few years they started dropping.   Does this mean its a good idea to run out and buy a gas furnace?    There isn't going to be any solid answer to this because I can't tell the future.    But we could get a better idea on what natural gas prices might do by getting a better idea of why they are dropping. 

First, why did natural gas prices start dropping?    I would have guessed that it was simply due to the recession and market forces caused lower demand and prices dropped due to it.   However it appears theres a bigger non-cyclical reason gas prices have dropped.    The Oilprices.com website article Natural Gas Goes Down in Flames says for the price increase "You can blame the new “fracking” technology, which in the last four years has unlocked a 100 year supply of natural gas in shale fields,...".    A doubling in supply availability would have a huge impact on prices and it seems clear that this is the key reason prices have dropped.    In addition to that, a Businessweek article points out that oil drilling produces natural gas as a byproduct so higher oil prices cause more oil drilling and also increases natural gas production.   Now that is more of a cyclical impact but it only worsens the current drop in natural gas.

Given that gas prices have gone down due to increased supply, whats that tell us about the future of the prices?   There is a pretty big glut in production right now and the producers are trying to cut production to decrease supply and hopefully see their prices stabilize or go back up.   That Business week article also mentions how at current prices its hard for the gas producers to be profitable so I think we've likely hit a floor in prices.   Further the Oilprices.com article also says : "There is probably a second 100 year supply out there, but with prices so low, what is the point in looking."    However I don't know how much truth there is to that idea, though its something to consider.

The amount of natural gas available on the supply side will impact prices.   The actual amount we can get is unknown.  There are estimates but they aren't perfect.   On one hand I find an article on Reason that suggests we could have 250 years worth of natural gas around the world and on the other hand Slate questions the 100 years worth currently estimated is accurate.   Its possible we could find ways to get even more natural gas in the future.    On the other hand its also possible that regulations could limit fracking and restrict the supply.   There is already a lot of talk about negative impacts from fracking.   I haven't followed that myself but its easy to see how public perception and legislation could limit an energy source, just look at nuclear energy in the U.S.  

I think you could make a reasonable prediction about the short term trend for natural gas prices.   Currently theres a glut of supply and prices have been trending down sharply.  It seems likely that prices will bottom before too long when the price hits the point that production costs make it unprofitable to produce gas.  It look like prices are likely to go up significantly in the short term for the next few years.   After that, the longer term future in 5 years or more is anyones guess as far as I'm concerned.   There are a lot of variables and unknowns that could cause natural gas to change in price in the long term.

My opinion is that natural gas will drop a bit and then stabilize over the next few years.   I wouldn't even attempt a guess on the price trend in the longer term.

Back to the original topic of switching my home furnace to natural gas..   For the short term I don't expect large increases in natural gas prices.   Therefore I could look at the current natural gas prices for my predictions on the return on investment in a conversion to natural gas for my heating.   However I have no idea on the longer term price trends for natural gas and this unknown is something I should consider when evaluating the financial return of a conversion to natural gas.
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Energy Costs versus House Age

Modern homes are built in more energy efficient ways.   New homes usually have better insulation, more energy efficient double pain windows, more efficient furnaces or air conditioners and other energy efficient improvements over older houses.   It then only stands to reason that newer homes should be cheaper to heat and cool. 

Of course newer homes are often larger than older homes so some of that efficiency gets masked by the higher energy costs of a larger home.   Therefore the best way to compare the energy efficiency based on age and improved building practices is by the average cost per square foot.

I found information on average energy spending per homes from the US Energy Information Administration and they broke it down into the decade the home was built.   The numbers are from 2005 which is the most recent covering this information.

Here's the data :

Year of Construction	$ / sq ft
Before 1940	0.88
1940 to 1949	0.88
1950 to 1959	0.86
1960 to 1969	0.90
1970 to 1979	0.89
1980 to 1989	0.85
1990 to 1999	0.76
2000 to 2005	0.68

Interestingly there aren't t major differences in the amount spent on the homes from 1940 to 1979.   It seems that the biggest efficiency improvements kicked in after the 1980's. 

If you were looking at a home built in the 1960's versus one built after 2000 then you could expect to see about a 24% decrease in average energy expenditures.

I should point out that this analysis is not perfect since this is just the amount people spent and not necessarily an indication of the different quality of home building per decade.   In other words its feasible that people who own older homes are more likely to waste energy or something like that.   I haven't proven a cause - effect here.   Also the data doesn't take into account other variables such as who owns the homes, where they are built, etc.  Its also possible that more of the new homes are built in states with lower energy costs.   However I think its pretty reasonable to take national spending averages and then assume that the differences are related to building practices based on building age.  

It should also be noted that these are just national averages and individual spending will vary greatly in different climates and other factors.    

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Fuel Taxes by Nation

Most of us are aware that the price of gasoline is much cheaper in the U.S.A. than in most other countries.  One of the key reasons that our gas is so much cheaper is that we have lower tax rates on gasoline than many countries.

I found the following graphic that shows the gasoline and diesel tax rates per gallon for various nations. 

Click on the image to see the full size version.

The data is from the Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center website. 
I found the direct XLS link via a google search.   The document says the data is current as of 1/1/2010 so its about 2 years old at this point.  I'm sure that at least one of the nations has changed its tax rate since then so this is undoubtedly not all accurate.  But its an accurate snapshot of fairly recent tax rates.

Here is a table of the values as well :

	Gasoline	Diesel
Mexico	-$0.41	-$0.28
US	$0.49	$0.59
Canada	$0.96	$0.77
New Zlnd.	$1.20	$0.00
Chile	$1.31	$0.44
Australia	$1.34	$1.34
Iceland	$2.28	$2.03
Poland	$2.40	$1.85
Japan	$2.59	$1.55
Korea	$2.64	$1.87
Estonia	$2.65	$2.46
Spain	$2.66	$2.08
Hungary	$2.68	$2.17
Austria	$2.77	$2.18
Luxembrg	$2.90	$1.94
Czech Rep.	$3.04	$2.59
Slovenia	$3.07	$2.03
Switzerland	$3.09	$3.15
Slovak Rep.	$3.23	$2.31
Israel	$3.23	$2.87
Sweden	$3.24	$2.56
Ireland	$3.41	$2.82
Italy	$3.54	$2.65
Belgium	$3.58	$2.10
Denmark	$3.58	$2.68
Portugal	$3.65	$2.28
France	$3.80	$2.69
Greece	$3.82	$2.39
Norway	$3.87	$2.97
Finland	$3.93	$2.28
UK	$3.95	$3.95
Germany	$4.10	$2.95
Netherlands	$4.19	$2.29
Turkey	$5.52	$3.81

You can see that the U.S. is the second cheapest listed only higher than Mexico.   Oddly enough it looks like Mexico pays a negative tax, but that is most likely a reflection of a subsidy for gas prices there.

Most of the nations listed have gasoline taxes of $2 to $4 per gallon.  

Figures Do NOT include VAT
The data sheet says that that figures do not include VAT.   Its my understanding that many countries also charge a VAT or sales tax on top of the gasoline taxes.  That means you could spend another 20% on top of the fuel taxes given.

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Natural Gas Prices by State

Yesterday I showed the historical trend for natural gas prices nationally.   Today I'll continue the fascinating discussion of natural gas prices by looking at the price for each state.   I once again got the information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

For comparison also see my previous article on average electricity cost by state.

Below are the prices for each state in dollars per 1000 cubic feet of natural gas.   These are average residential rates per state.

	2010	2009
U.S.A	11.21	12.14
Alabama	15.92	18.12
Alaska	8.89	10.23
Arizona	15.86	17.65
Arkansas	11.52	13.39
California		9.43
Colorado	8.14	8.8
Connecticut	14.93	14.81
Delaware		17.79
D.C.		13.92
Florida	18.14	20.18
Georgia	15.56	16.3
Hawaii	44.62	36.37
Idaho	9.08	10.54
Illinois	9.39	8.98
Indiana	8.52	10.81
Iowa	9.59	9.83
Kansas	10.64	11.1
Kentucky	10	11.96
Louisiana	11.79	13.15
Maine	14.14	16.43
Maryland		13.73
Massachusetts		14.85
Michigan	11.25	11.27
Minnesota	8.7	8.99
Mississippi	10.01	11.22
Missouri		12.61
Montana	8.67	9.5
Nebraska	8.96	9.34
Nevada	12.25	13.18
New Hampshire		15.33
New Jersey		14.54
New Mexico	9.61	9.53
New York	14.04	15.05
North Carolina		14.25
North Dakota	8.08	8.46
Ohio	11.02	12.68
Oklahoma		11.39
Oregon	12.81	14.52
Pennsylvania	12.94	14.74
Rhode Island		17.06
South Carolina		14.91
South Dakota	8.77	9.14
Tennessee	10.21	12.16
Texas	10.76	11.19
Utah	8.21	8.95
Vermont	16.14	17.29
Virginia		13.83
Washington	12.26	13.95
West Virginia	11.35	14.75
Wisconsin	10.34	10.76
Wyoming	8.47	9.39

History Natural Gas Prices 1967 to 2010

The US Energy Information Administration tracks natural gas prices.   They have data on the prices of natural gas going back to 1967.

Here is the history of prices shown graphically.   These are the US national average prices per 1000 cubic feet of gas.

From 1967 to 2010 the price grew at an average annual rate of 5.2%.   It looks like prices grew drastically this past decade but the drop 2008 to 2010 actually lessens that trend considerably.  Between 1999 and 2010 the costs rose at a rate of 4.8%.   


Yearly data is in the table below :

Year	Price
1967	$   1.04
1968	$   1.04
1969	$   1.05
1970	$   1.09
1971	$   1.15
1972	$   1.21
1973	$   1.29
1974	$   1.43
1975	$   1.71
1976	$   1.98
1977	$   2.35
1978	$   2.56
1979	$   2.98
1980	$   3.68
1981	$   4.29
1982	$   5.17
1983	$   6.06
1984	$   6.12
1985	$   6.12
1986	$   5.83
1987	$   5.54
1988	$   5.47
1989	$   5.64
1990	$   5.80
1991	$   5.82
1992	$   5.89
1993	$   6.16
1994	$   6.41
1995	$   6.06
1996	$   6.34
1997	$   6.94
1998	$   6.82
1999	$   6.69
2000	$   7.76
2001	$   9.63
2002	$   7.89
2003	$   9.63
2004	$ 10.75
2005	$ 12.70
2006	$ 13.73
2007	$ 13.08
2008	$ 13.89
2009	$ 12.14
2010	$ 11.21

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