Energy crisis in eastern Europe.

According to analysts, the rates of energy poverty, defined as the inability to afford sufficient heating supplies, will rise significantly in countries such as Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria. «If the prices of basic goods, primarily energy and food, increase, that pushes many people into poverty, and those already under the poverty line into extreme poverty,» said David Nemeth, Hungary economist for Belgian bank KBC Group. Moreover, the increased use of toxic fuels also threatens to raise emissions across the region significantly. Last month, ruling party leader Jarosław Kaczyński told Poles to burn «everything except tyres» to keep warm.

Agnieszka Warsaw-Buchanan, a lawyer for the non-governmental organisation ClientEarth in Poland, predicts air quality will plummet across the region. «People should not be put in the position of having to choose between heating their homes or harming their health from pollution,» she said. Poland is subsidising the purchase of coal, which heats one-third of homes. Other regional governments are introducing emergency support measures, though mostly not on the scale of their western counterparts.

«Support schemes are badly set up for the poor,» said Dana Markova, an environmentalist in Slovakia, where last year, one-fifth of households were defined as being in energy poverty. She said that the poorest Slovaks wasted only small amounts of energy, so they would not benefit from a new law subsidising households that reduced energy consumption by 15 per cent. Slovaks have scavenged so much wood from the foothills of the Tatra mountains bordering Poland that Nová Lesná’s mayor Peter Hritz said his town was «going back 50 years» in heating methods and pollution. The winter heating crisis will be harrowing in countries such as Bulgaria, where two-thirds of rural homes burn wood.

Even before the war, 60 per cent of Bulgarians on low incomes could not adequately heat their homes. In Kosovo, one of Europe’s poorest countries, wood is burnt in nearly every rural home and most urban households. A faltering electricity system, including regular blackouts, could contribute to a doubling of wood usage this year, according to Egzona Shala, executive director of Pristina-based environmental group Ecos. Hungary’s furnace manufacturers’ association has urged customers to stop calling suppliers.

In Hungary’s largest segregated slum close to Miskolc, another former hub of heavy industry, 5,000 mostly Roma residents are braced for harsher times. «I have a cubic metre of wood, which will be enough for a month, maybe,» said Gáspár Sipeki, a Hungarian Roma. He can buy more wood illegally through a secret deal deep in the Ózd valley when his stock runs out. «I make €150 a month, and I can’t buy wood for €100».

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