Energy Insights: Natural Gas Heating in New Home Construction

In the latest edition of Energy Insights, we’re taking a look at new residential home construction and the changes in market share for natural gas heating.

Based on US Census Bureau surveys, between 2011 and 2019, 7.26 million more households were added to the total housing market. More than 8 million new homes were completed during that same time frame, suggesting a possible 1.13 million homes were retired since 2011.

Within that time period, natural gas space heating grew by 2.35 million households since 2011. More than 4.3 million new homes were built with gas space heating and contributed to 52% of all new homes built since 2011. Heat pumps were installed in 2.64 million homes since 2011, or 31% of all new construction. The total number of households with heat pumps only grew by 611,000 since 2011.

While gas furnaces and heat pumps had high new construction numbers, because the net change in total households is lower than the number of new housing starts, some customers may have converted to other types of equipment or retired their homes.

Only 400,000 homes were built with an electric furnace for space heating or 4.7 percent of all new homes. Meanwhile, over 10.8 million converted to that form of heat. For every 1 new net gain in heat pumps, 18 more electric resistance units were added since 2011.

Go deeper into the data by reading the full report here.