Ask how a house stays warm and most of America answers “gas” or “electricity” — something that arrives invisibly, through a pipe or a wire. In some places the heat arrives on a truck: fuel oil, pumped into a tank at the house. Out of every 100 lived-in homes, which state has the most heated that way? Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
Coldest place wins. Alaska! 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Maine — 50.3 out of every 100 lived-in homes. Half the state. For the country as a whole the figure is 3.5, so Maine runs at roughly fourteen times the national rate, and 1.36× the next state, New Hampshire at 37.0. And it is not simply a matter of cold: Alaska is only fifth, at 27.5. What Maine is missing is pipes. EIA's state profile says “Most of Maine lacks local natural gas distribution systems, so only about 1 in 12 households rely on natural gas for home heating.” If the gas line never reaches your street, the fuel has to come to you — in a tank, on a truck, all winter long.
📚 BackgroundHeat has to arrive somehow. In most of America it arrives invisibly — natural gas through a pipe under the street, or electricity down a wire. In Maine it mostly arrives on a truck, and EIA's state profile is blunt about why: “Most of Maine lacks local natural gas distribution systems, so only about 1 in 12 households rely on natural gas for home heating.” The oil does not cross the state line in a pipe either: “no interstate petroleum product pipelines enter Maine” (one product pipeline runs inside the state, between Portland and Bangor), so refined products come in at Maine's ports and at border crossings from Canada. That is a long chain to depend on for winter, and the country treats it that way — the U.S. Department of Energy created the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve in 2000, which “holds 1 million barrels at storage sites in four states, including Maine, where 200,000 barrels of heating oil is stored.”(U.S. Energy Information Administration, Maine State Energy Profile — Analysis (last updated December 18, 2025))
Homes heated mainly with fuel oil or kerosene (% of occupied homes, ACS 2024)
🇺🇸 United States (national)3.5 %
Maine#150.3 %
Most: Maine (50.3 %); at the other end of the list, Wyoming (0.1 %) — one of a dozen states that all round to the same number.
Note: from the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau sends to a sample of addresses, not to every home — so every number here is an estimate published with a give-or-take, and two states within a few tenths of each other may really be tied. Twelve states at the bottom of this list all round to 0.1, so the order among them is not a real difference. The question asks which fuel a home uses most, so a house with a wood stove for cold nights still counts by whatever does the main job. U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024 1-year estimates.
U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey 2024 1-year profile DP04_0066PE (house heating fuel — fuel oil, kerosene, etc.) (2026-08-22) — Official published survey estimates (the committed raw file is the API response, unchanged). The American Community Survey goes to a sample of addresses, not to every home, so every figure here is an estimate published with a margin of error. The question is about the fuel used most for heating an occupied home, so each home lands in exactly one row of the table.
↳ On data.census.gov, open profile table “DP04” for 2024 and read DP04_0066PE (House heating fuel — Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.) by state.