Falling temperatures will mean rising heating bills for Northwestern students living off campus this winter.
Nicor Gas, the main natural gas supplier for Evanston, expects prices to rise with higher demand in the colder winter months. According to Nicor’s Web site, www.nicor.com, November prices are 74 cents per unit of natural gas, up from 58 cents in October — an almost 30 percent increase.
Students" bank accounts will soon feel the prices.
Li-Wei Chu, who has lived off campus since last year, said she"s bracing for a higher winter gas bill.
"In the winter it pretty much doubled from what it was in the fall," said Chu, a Communication senior who lives on the 800 block of Simpson Street. "It gets a little ridiculous."
Chu’s latest bi-monthly Nicor bill for her four-bedroom apartment was about $80, which she said was about normal. One bill last winter, when Chu also lived in a four-bedroom apartment, came to $250.
Quality insulation can minimize gas bills. Students who live in older, poorly insulated houses might be paying more than students in well-insulated apartments.
"Apartment buildings are pretty well insulated, but for all these smaller houses that have been converted into smaller apartments, a lot of landlords will convert the sunroom," Chu said. "I live in a sun room, so my entire room is windows basically and doesn’t have real walls."
Asking landlords for better insulation might be difficult, especially if they usually ignore tenants’ requests, said Jacquelyn Chi, a Communication senior. "I’d say our insulation is OK, but I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable asking our landlord for better insulation because they’re not very responsive to us in the first place," said Chi, who lives on the 1000 block of Garnett Place.
Nicor paid record-high summer prices for the gas it placed in storage this year, said Don Ingle, a Nicor spokesman. Once the reserves get low, Nicor must purchase more gas.
"One of the things people should look for is early season cold in November and December," Ingle said. "If you get really cold weather, then storage all across the country can be drawn down out of the market, so the commodity could go crazy."
Nicor and its suppliers already agreed to a price range for the gas Nicor will purchase once its reserves are low. This protects the company from price spikes, but doesn’t always guarantee the lowest price, Ingle said.
"We’re telling people to expect … a continuation of the higher bills from the last couple years," Ingle said.
Natural gas prices have risen steadily the past couple of decades due in part to increased demand, because natural gas is less damaging to the environment than other fossil fuels, Ingle said.
More recently, an unusually cold winter in 2001 also hit students’ wallets. Nicor suggests energy-saving tactics such as keeping drapes open on windows that face the sun and closing the drapes at night.
But Chi is prepared for her next gas bill.
"I kind of always expect the winter bills to be more," she said. "It’s sort of just a reality."
Reach Yuxing Zheng at [email protected].
