Age of the city and sufficient infrastructure. Once the building is built to use [oil or gas or whatever] it’s never refit to use something else. Something something quarterly profits.
Climate. You’re not going to need gas heating in Florida when it’s cold for only a short time of the year.
Electric heating also works great basically everywhere else, too. Actually climate has very little to do with it in most cases and if there’s any non-manipulative reason(gas companies are really bad for this) it’s to do with what infrastructure makes the most sense.
In places like Québec we have electric heating because hydro makes electricity pretty cheap. Up north in Nunavut they will often have big tanks on the property and a truck will come by to refill them.
Makes sense for Florida! I expected the opposite on the West coast though
I’ve been told that not only does it occasionally freeze in Florida but that houses were essentially uninsulated. Before a/c, there was no reason to insulate in the south.
Electric heat also has the advantage of nothing to maintain. You can have your baseboard heating just sit there most of the time, but it will still come on the rare times you need it
Market supply and demand I assume.
Age of home probably plays a factor as well.
Natural gas here, because the city has an extensive network. Previously, living with my parents a city away, the condo had oil heat.
A year and a half ago I had to replace my cast-iron boiler and (leaking) hot water heater, and so I took advantage of financing to replace them with a gas-powered tankless combo.
The oldest areas on the east coast were settled before gas lines were a thing and electricity existed. So they use oil unless it’s a big city that paid to have gas lines installed.
This is why cities that grew a lot after gas was industrialized primarily have natural gas.
Remote areas will use oil, propane, or wood because they can be delivered by truck and heat pumps are a pretty new technology that hasn’t worked well in cold areas until recently.
The south has minimal heat requirements so they can get by with electric which is cheap to install but not efficient enough to provide primary heat in cold areas.
Also, southern homes generally have air conditioning so adding a reversing valve or set of heater coils is pretty easy.
