Hot Weather and Low Prices Boost Demand for Natural Gas

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

September 7, 2012 | 3:11 PM

Mario Tama / Getty Images

Dusty Rhodes plays his saxophone in New York City during a heatwave in mid-July.

One of the hottest summers on record, combined with some of the lowest natural gas prices ever seen, increased natural gas use 24 percent over the same six-month period of 2011. Using figures from Bentek Energy, the Energy Information Administration released a report today that shows how natural gas generated electricity peaked in July and August.

“Bentek Energy, which has been estimating power burn since January 2005, said that 17 of the 25 highest days of power burn since 2005 occurred this summer between June 28 and August 9. The two main drivers of the increased use of natural gas at power plants this year are weather and a structural shift toward generating more electricity from natural gas-fired power plants.”

The greatest percentage increase occurred in the upper Mid-West.