Brolte › Home Energy Upgrade Ladder › Guides › Heating and cooling share
How much of your energy goes to heating and cooling?
It's the number that decides what most upgrades are worth: insulation, air sealing, heat pumps and thermostat setbacks all save in proportion to what you spend on heating and cooling. Your own bills can tell you what it is.
Short answer: in a typical home, heating and cooling together take 17% to 48% of energy spending, depending on the state (EIA's household energy survey). Your home can differ a lot, and a year of bills shows by how much.
Reading your own bills
Line up a year of bills. The months when you neither heat nor cool, usually in spring and fall, show roughly what everything else uses: water heating, appliances, lighting. What your winter bills add on top of that is mostly heating, and what summer adds is mostly cooling.
Budget billing evens out the dollar amounts and hides the seasons. Use the kWh and therms printed on each bill instead; the Upgrade Ladder asks for them when you tick budget billing.
How the Upgrade Ladder measures it
Enter at least nine months of electricity or gas bills, covering winter (and summer if you have central air). Each bill is matched to the weather your state (or your part of California, Oregon or Washington) actually had over the dates it covers, from NOAA's climate records. The weather is counted from the outdoor temperature at which homes in your state start to need heating or cooling, fitted for each state to ten years of EIA energy-use and NOAA weather records: for heating, from 49°F to 65°F, depending on the state. If your own bills clearly fit different temperatures, yours are used. A weather regression then separates what your home uses in any season from what rises with the cold and the heat, and restates it for a normal-weather year (the 1991–2020 average). When the bills don't support a reliable fit (under budget billing, for example), the ladder keeps your state's typical shares, and the paid report says which it used and why.
By state
The typical shares are from EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS 2020, state table CE3.6.ST); the temperatures are the ones the tool fitted for each state. Alaska and Hawaii have no NOAA degree-day records in the tool, so it keeps typical shares there.
| State | Heating | Cooling | Heating starts below | Cooling starts above |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 23% | 18% | 61°F | 68°F |
| Alaska | 41% | 0% | no weather data | no weather data |
| Arizona | 11% | 31% | 65°F | 68°F |
| Arkansas | 28% | 16% | 64°F | 68°F |
| California | 14% | 13% | 59°F | 59°F |
| Colorado | 30% | 9% | 54°F | 65°F |
| Connecticut | 34% | 9% | 58°F | 62°F |
| Delaware | 30% | 11% | 59°F | 59°F |
| District of Columbia | 27% | 14% | 60°F | 63°F |
| Florida | 8% | 29% | 65°F | 74°F |
| Georgia | 23% | 17% | 61°F | 67°F |
| Hawaii | 0% | 17% | no weather data | no weather data |
| Idaho | 31% | 7% | 54°F | 57°F |
| Illinois | 35% | 11% | 60°F | 64°F |
| Indiana | 33% | 11% | 60°F | 60°F |
| Iowa | 32% | 10% | 58°F | 63°F |
| Kansas | 27% | 16% | 60°F | 64°F |
| Kentucky | 30% | 13% | 59°F | 66°F |
| Louisiana | 14% | 25% | 63°F | 72°F |
| Maine | 40% | 4% | 56°F | 65°F |
| Maryland | 32% | 11% | 60°F | 66°F |
| Massachusetts | 35% | 9% | 57°F | 59°F |
| Michigan | 33% | 9% | 59°F | 64°F |
| Minnesota | 35% | 7% | 56°F | 60°F |
| Mississippi | 24% | 20% | 63°F | 70°F |
| Missouri | 33% | 14% | 59°F | 66°F |
| Montana | 33% | 5% | 53°F | 65°F |
| Nebraska | 33% | 11% | 57°F | 65°F |
| Nevada | 17% | 22% | 61°F | 62°F |
| New Hampshire | 37% | 6% | 52°F | 65°F |
| New Jersey | 28% | 13% | 59°F | 63°F |
| New Mexico | 25% | 13% | 59°F | 59°F |
| New York | 32% | 10% | 58°F | 59°F |
| North Carolina | 26% | 15% | 59°F | 66°F |
| North Dakota | 40% | 6% | 58°F | 65°F |
| Ohio | 37% | 9% | 61°F | 63°F |
| Oklahoma | 26% | 18% | 60°F | 68°F |
| Oregon | 28% | 6% | 56°F | 65°F |
| Pennsylvania | 37% | 9% | 58°F | 61°F |
| Rhode Island | 36% | 8% | 57°F | 64°F |
| South Carolina | 21% | 19% | 62°F | 68°F |
| South Dakota | 32% | 8% | 56°F | 58°F |
| Tennessee | 26% | 15% | 58°F | 61°F |
| Texas | 17% | 24% | 65°F | 70°F |
| Utah | 28% | 12% | 49°F | 65°F |
| Vermont | 39% | 3% | 55°F | 65°F |
| Virginia | 26% | 13% | 58°F | 65°F |
| Washington | 35% | 3% | 57°F | 65°F |
| West Virginia | 37% | 10% | 61°F | 64°F |
| Wisconsin | 31% | 8% | 58°F | 62°F |
| Wyoming | 43% | 5% | 55°F | 65°F |
Shares are of a typical home's energy spending in the state, across all fuels.
Your own numbers
Your own bills decide your share. The Upgrade Ladder measures it from them, and the paid report shows the split, the temperatures behind it and where they came from.
Build your ladder How the estimates are made
Sources
- Typical shares: EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS 2020), state table CE3.6.ST.
- Weather: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, climate-division degree days.
- Each state's heating and cooling temperatures: EIA monthly residential electricity sales (Form EIA-861M) and natural gas use (Natural Gas Monthly), with NOAA weather.
- Every step in detail: how the estimates are made.
More guides: How much does attic insulation save · Is replacing windows worth it for the energy savings · Does a thermostat setback really save money · all guides