There are six major fuels used to keep people's houses warm in the winter in New York State: Natural Gas, Liquid Petroleum Gas, Electricity, Wood, Heating Oil, and Coal.

Please Note: Due to great variety in percentage use of various fuels, each map is scaled differently. The goal of these maps wasn't as much to provide a map of the dominent fuel.

Natural Gas.

Natural gas is by far the most popular fuel used to heat houses in NY State. Yet, it's use is primarily concentrated around urban centers and Western NY where there are natural gas lines laid into the ground.

The network of natural gas pipelines is far more extensive in Western and Central NY, as that is were there are more wells producing gas, and more pipelines to transmit it. Moreover, in some rural communities, non-commerically viable wells now are used for on-farm and single-household energy production.

Heating Oil.

Heating oil remains popular in rural areas of the Hudson Valley, were at one time oil was cheap due to Hudson River ports bringing in vast quanities of oil on tanker ships. Now not as cheap, it's still a legacy fuel widely used in rural areas where there is no natural gas service, and it is not cost-effective to switch to LPG.

LP Bottle Gas.

A heavier hydrocarbon then natural gas, that is normally stripped of natural gas, liquid petroleum gas, also known as LP Bottle Gas, is a cleaner and cheaper alternative to heating oil in rural communities where there is no natural gas service. Most newer houses, that do not use wood as their primary source of heat, use LP gas.

Electricity.

While very expensive, there are a lot of rented units across the state where electric heat is the norm. In cities where there is cheap muncipal electricity, the use of electricity for heating tends to dramatically increase.

Wood.

In rural areas — especially those with large forests — and not a lot of farming going on, wood is a staple as a heating fuel. Areas with more farming tend to have less use of wood as a fuel, with the highest use of wood heating in the North Country and also the Southern Tier of NY. There is almost no use of wood as a primary south of heat on Long Island or the New York City Metro Area.

Anthracite Coal.

Anthracite Coal is largely a niche fuel, but it is most popular in the Southern Tier in the Finger Lakes region. In that region, coal is about as popular as heating oil is in the Upper Hudson Valley.