Most American homes are heated by something you never see: gas through a pipe under the street, or electricity down a wire. Some homes are heated by something you can carry in your arms — wood. Out of every 100 lived-in homes, which state has the most heated mainly that way? Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
Coldest state wins again. Alaska! 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Vermont — 12.5 out of every 100 lived-in homes, about 1 in 8. For the country as a whole the figure is 1.4, so Vermont runs at roughly nine times the national rate and 1.42× the next state, Maine at 8.8. And cold alone does not explain it: Alaska is not in the top five. What Vermont has is forests, and — outside one corner of the state — no natural gas service. EIA's state profile says “The northwestern part of the state remains the only area with access to natural gas service,” and that “Forests that cover almost three-fourths of Vermont support the state's wood products industry, whose byproducts fuel electricity generation and provide home heating.” EIA does not say that this is why Vermont leads, and neither do we. Fourth and fifth place — New Hampshire (5.8) and New Mexico (5.7) — are too close to call once you allow for the survey's give-or-take.
📚 BackgroundVermont is the state where the heat grows back. EIA's state profile starts with the trees — “Forests that cover almost three-fourths of Vermont support the state's wood products industry, whose byproducts fuel electricity generation and provide home heating” — and reaches the same champion this quiz does: “About one in nine Vermont households use wood for their primary heating source, more than eight times the national average and the largest share of any state.” (EIA is reading the Census Bureau's single-year 2024 table; the numbers on this page are the five-year 2020–2024 average, which is why the fraction here comes out a little larger.) Something else in the profile rhymes with Maine's heating-oil story: where the gas network stops. “Vermont's single natural gas utility receives its supply from a small-capacity pipeline that brings natural gas south from Canada,” EIA writes, and “The northwestern part of the state remains the only area with access to natural gas service.” Where the gas network does not reach, heat has to arrive some other way — and in Vermont a lot of it arrives as logs. EIA does not say that the gas map is the reason Vermont leads the wood-heat table, so treat that as a question to keep asking, not a settled answer.(U.S. Energy Information Administration, Vermont State Energy Profile — Analysis (last updated January 15, 2026))↗ (opens in a new tab)
🐕Biscuit's fun facts
📚 Stated as fact by textbooks / public agencies
Mushrooms are the forest's cleanup crew. Fungi that feed on dead wood and leaves break them down and send the nutrients back into the soil. Without them, the park service says, a redwood forest “would be nothing but a wood pile!”
Why does coal exist at all? One theory: about 300 million years ago, dead trees piled up because no living thing could yet digest their lignin — so they turned into coal instead of rotting. Scientists comparing fungal genomes proposed that fungi with lignin-eating genes appeared near the end of that period, and coal-making slowed down after that.
Homes heated mainly with wood (% of occupied homes, ACS 2020–2024 5-year)
🇺🇸 United States (national)1.4 %
Vermont#112.5 %
Most: Vermont (12.5 %); fewest: Florida (0.1 %) — about 1 home in a thousand.
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. These are the five-year estimates (2020–2024), which average five years of answers and carry smaller give-or-takes than a single year; Vermont's (±0.4) and Maine's (±0.3) do not overlap, so Vermont stays on top even after both published margins of error are applied, while fourth and fifth are within each other's range. The question asks which fuel a home uses the most, so a house with a fireplace for holidays still counts by whatever does the main job. The 50 states are shown; the District of Columbia is not ranked. U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020–2024 5-year estimates.
Homes heated mainly with wood (% of occupied homes, ACS 2020–2024 5-year)
Rank
State
Value
#1
Vermont
12.5 %
#2
Maine
8.8 %
#3
Montana
6.6 %
#4
New Hampshire
5.8 %
#5
New Mexico
5.7 %
#6
Idaho
5.4 %
#7
Oregon
4.8 %
#8
Alaska
4.6 %
#8
West Virginia
4.6 %
#10
Wyoming
4.5 %
#11
Washington
2.8 %
#12
Wisconsin
2.7 %
#13
Arkansas
2.5 %
#14
Missouri
2.4 %
#15
Michigan
2.2 %
#16
Pennsylvania
2.1 %
#17
Kentucky
1.9 %
#18
Arizona
1.6 %
#18
Minnesota
1.6 %
#18
Virginia
1.6 %
#21
Indiana
1.5 %
#22
Colorado
1.4 %
#22
Connecticut
1.4 %
#22
Ohio
1.4 %
#25
California
1.3 %
#25
New York
1.3 %
#25
Oklahoma
1.3 %
#28
Kansas
1.2 %
#29
Iowa
1.1 %
#29
Massachusetts
1.1 %
#29
North Carolina
1.1 %
#29
Rhode Island
1.1 %
#29
South Dakota
1.1 %
#29
Tennessee
1.1 %
#35
Maryland
1 %
#35
Nevada
1 %
#37
Mississippi
0.9 %
#38
Nebraska
0.8 %
#38
Utah
0.8 %
#40
Alabama
0.7 %
#41
Delaware
0.6 %
#42
Georgia
0.5 %
#42
South Carolina
0.5 %
#44
Louisiana
0.4 %
#45
Illinois
0.3 %
#45
New Jersey
0.3 %
#45
North Dakota
0.3 %
#48
Hawaii
0.2 %
#48
Texas
0.2 %
#50
Florida
0.1 %
🇺🇸 USA (national figure)
1.4 %
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2020–2024 (ACS 5-year estimates))
Sources
Data as of: 2020–2024 (ACS 5-year estimates)
U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year profile DP04_0068PE (house heating fuel — wood)↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-20) — 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; these are the 5-year estimates, which average five years of answers (2020–2024) and carry smaller margins than the 1-year figures. The question asks which fuel an occupied home uses most for heating, so each home lands in exactly one fuel row. The figures cover the 50 states.
↳ On data.census.gov, open profile table “DP04” for the 2020–2024 ACS 5-year estimates and read DP04_0068PE (House heating fuel — Wood) by state.