Alabama is 2016’s third-least energy-efficient state

It’s no secret energy is expensive. It’s one of the biggest household expenses for American consumers, who, on average, spend nearly $2,000 per year on energy bills. About half of that amount pays just for heating and cooling.

Unfortunately for Alabamians, the state is the third-least energy-efficient in the nation, according to a new study by WalletHub.

In the new, in-depth analysis of 2016’s Most & Least Energy-Efficient States, the personal-finance website endeavored to bring awareness to the impact of energy on American wallets and encourage citizen to conserve more, as October is National Energy Awareness Month.

Energy efficiency in Alabama (1=Best; 24=Avg.)

• 46^{th: h}ome energy efficiency
• 3^rd: vehicle-fuel efficiency
• 46^{th: t}ransportation efficiency

Here’s how Alabama compares to the rest of the country:

In order to determine the most energy-efficient states, WalletHub’s analysts compared 48 states across two key dimensions, including “Home Energy Efficiency” and “Car Energy Efficiency.” Due to data limitations, Alaska and Hawaii were excluded from the analysis. WalletHub analysts obtained the “Home Energy Efficiency” score by calculating the ratio of total residential energy consumption to annual degree days. For the the “Car Energy Efficiency” score, they divided the annual vehicle miles driven by gallons of gasoline consumed to determine vehicle-fuel efficiency and measured annual vehicle miles driven per capita to determine transportation efficiency.

Each dimension was weighted proportionally to reflect national consumption patterns and graded on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing optimal energy efficiency. They then calculated overall scores for each state and used the result to construct the final rankings.