Americans should expect to pay higher prices to heat their homes this winter, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Sunday.
“Yeah, this is going to happen,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash. “It will be more expensive this year than last year.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden shakes hands White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm looks on as he arrives for a meeting with cabinet officials, governors, and private sector partners to discuss preparedness of Western states to heat, drought and wildfires this season, at the White House in Washington, U.S. June 30, 2021. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Granholm, a former Democratic Michigan governor appointed by President Biden, said the president is exploring “all of the tools that he has,” including tapping into U.S. oil reserves, to address the rising energy costs.
“We are in a slightly beneficial position, well certainly relative to Europe, because their chokehold of natural gas is very significant. They’re going to pay five times higher,” she said. “But we have the same problem in fuels that the supply chains have, which is that the oil and gas companies are not flipping the switch as quickly as the demand requires. So that’s why the president has been focused on both the immediate term and the long-term. Let us get off of the volatility associated with fossil fuels and associated with others who don’t have our country’s interests at heart and invest in moving to clean energy where we will not have this problem.”
Granholm touted the importance of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress on Friday, which Biden argued will “ease inflationary pressure” and reduce supply-chain bottlenecks “now and for decades to come.”
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND – NOVEMBER 04: U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm (L) and British Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng speak to delegates during day five of COP26 at SECC on November 3, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. Today COP26 will focus on accelerating the global transition to clean energy. The 2021 climate summit in Glasgow is the 26th “Conference of the Parties” and represents a gathering of all the countries signed on to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Climate Agreement. The aim of this year’s conference is to commit countries to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
Asked if gas could reach an average of $4 a gallon, Granholm said the Biden administration “hopes” not but that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is “controlling the agenda.”
Last month, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report warning that the cost of heating oil is expected to rise approximately 43% compared to last year to due to “higher expected fuel costs as well as more consumption of energy due to a colder winter.”
Meanwhile, the agency expects propane costs to rise by 54%, natural gas costs to rise by 30% and electricity costs to rise by 6%.
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US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm speaks during the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference, annual meeting of all the IAEA member states, at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria on September 20, 2021. (Photo by JOE KLAMAR / AFP) (Photo by JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the EIA’s winter fuels outlook, the average U.S. household is expected to spend an average of $1,734 during the 2021-2022 winter season if using heating oil to heat their homes, up from $1,210 last year, $1,268 if using electricity, up from $1,192 last year, and $746 if using natural gas, up from $572 last year.
Granholm said the EIA is expected to release a new forecast on rising gas prices on Tuesday.
Fox News’ Lucas Manfredi contributed to this report.