As winter heating costs rise, so does consumer anxiety in Rhode Island, poll finds
By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
Unease over heating prices has risen since last November, when UNH researchers found 70% of residents were worried about their winter energy bills. Among the anxious, 40% said they were “very worried,” while 37% were “worried.”
And that worry was expressed across each of the three voter affiliations used in the survey released Nov. 25 — Democrat, Republican and independent — expressed being “worried” or “very worried.” That included 88% of independents, 83% of Democrats, and 61% of Republicans.
Independents, or unaffiliated voters, comprised the overall survey’s largest share at about 51% of the total of 711 residents surveyed. The survey was conducted online between Nov. 13 and 17.
The worries are not abstract, as evidenced by Federal Energy Information Administration data which shows Rhode Island home heating oil prices at about $3.88 a gallon in the last week of November 2025. That’s up from the same time last year, when a gallon of oil cost about $3.52. It’s also significantly above pandemic-era November 2020, when heating oil cost about $2.31 a gallon in Rhode Island.
Heating oil is, however, still below the heights achieved in the fall of 2022, when October and November oil prices regularly soared above $5 a gallon, almost reaching $5.89 in the last week of October 2022.
Propane has been similarly expensive in recent years, with federal data showing residential propane averages about $3.56 a gallon on Nov. 24, 2025, comparable to the $3.61 per gallon recorded in the same time period in November 2024, but still above the high-$2.80s of late 2020. Like oil, propane prices spiked in fall 2022, regularly reaching the $3.80s in October and November of that year.
The day after the poll was released, Rhode Island Energy submitted a request to increase service charges for gas and electric customers in an application submitted to the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission. If approved, the proposed new distribution rates which would take effect in September 2026 would increase the average residential electric bill by about $7.78 a month, while a typical gas customer would pay $343.53 more annually, a 20.6% jump.
Gloomy on the economy
Rhode Islanders’ concerns about heating bills are embedded in a larger pessimism about the economy at large, with only 13% of the 711 respondents surveyed saying their household is financially better off than it was a year ago.
“Rhode Islanders are generally downbeat on the state and national economies, as a majority feel that the economy is getting worse,” the survey’s introduction states.
Another 40% of respondents said their household was financially worse off than a year ago, while 47% did not discern any substantial change in their household finances over the previous 12 months. Half of respondents who identified as Democrats felt their households were worse off, while only 24% of Republicans did.
“The fact that they were so close together, was surprising to me,” Rep. Teresa Tanzi, a South Kingstown Democrat, said after she looked over the poll results. ”Normally I would say, ‘Oh, it’s a partisan thing,’ but clearly this is something that is impacting all people.”
Tanzi, known as a strong advocate for energy affordability, noted that in Washington County, which includes the district she represents, just under half of people were “very worried” about energy costs, higher than any other county in the state.
“I certainly hear it from my neighbors,” Tanzi said.
The poll found about 40% of households making under $75,000 a year and 54% of households making under $45,000 annually said they were worse off financially than last year.
The sample’s largest of six income demographics — households making over $150,000 annually, which accounted for 135 respondents — said they had stayed the same since last year at 56%, although equal amounts of 22% thought they were better or worse off from last year.
The survey does show that broader pessimism about the macroeconomic picture has shrunk somewhat in the past six months, slightly more so when looking toward the future. When the survey center asked the same questions of Rhode Islanders back in May, 45% of respondents expected to be financially worse off a year from now. In the new survey, that number has fallen to 35%, and an additional 21% of respondents think they will be better off in a year. The other 45% expect to be in roughly the same place financially.
Affordability concerns are more than a seasonal trend, said Camilo Viveiros, executive director of the George Wiley Center in Pawtucket, a nonprofit which advocates for low-income Rhode Islanders.
Viveiros pointed to percentage of income payment plans (PIPP), which would cap bills according to a fixed percentage of a customer’s income. A bill to institute PIPP in Rhode Island was submitted by Democratic Rep. Scott Slater of Providence early in the 2025 legislative session, but it failed to move out of committee.
“The George Wiley Center urges public officials to listen to our calls to restructure rates for long term affordability,” Viveiros said in an email Friday, adding that “it is time” for state officials “who profess to care about affordability to lend their support for the PIPP proposal.”
He also pointed to a policy brief recently published Nov. 20 by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which pointed to PIPP as a means to “restructure rates for long term affordability.”
The brief noted that a broader Federal Poverty Line benchmark would apply to PIPP eligibility and could be optimized if paired with the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which is a federal program.
In fiscal year 2025, Rhode Island received nearly $27 million in LIHEAP funding, which helps low-income families with a one-time seasonal payment they can put toward heating bills. The minimum benefit was $64 and the maximum was $1,148, with higher allowances up to $1,500 during a winter crisis.
In fiscal year 2024, 28,234 Rhode Island households got help from the LIHEAP program.
Tanzi said she’s worried about the program in 2026 due to changes in federal policy. A shutdown-induced delay concluded Friday when $3.6 billion in LIHEAP funding nationally was finally released to states. If LIHEAP suffers any cuts, Tanzi said, “we’re really in a crisis for people.” She pointed to lower-income survey respondents who answered the question, “Do you worry about winter energy costs?”
Such respondents might be “basing their assumptions and their response to this on the availability of LIHEAP money,” Tanzi said. “If we did this poll again in two months, or three months, I have a feeling that things would be incredibly different in the responses.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.
