Poland fearing the blunt of energy poverty

 Money Wise:

It’s still summer in Poland. But winter is coming.

According to Reuters, outside the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, people are lining up in their cars and trucks to stock up on coal.

Why? Because 3.8 million households in the country are relying on it for heating in the winter.

“This is beyond imagination, people are sleeping in their cars,” a 57-year-old man named Artur tells Reuters. “I remember the communist times but it didn't cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Poland and the European Union placed an embargo on the import of coal from Russia. Although Poland produces coal, the country largely leans on imported coal for much of its household heating.

Lukasz Horbacz, head of the Polish Coal Merchant Chamber of Commerce, tells Reuters that the embargo “turned the market upside down.”

“As much as 60% of those that use coal for heating may be affected by energy poverty,” Horbacz says.
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Poland isn’t the only country that’s using coal.

According to the International Energy Agency, coal consumption is set to increase globally.

“Based on current economic and market trends, global coal consumption is forecast to rise by 0.7% in 2022 to 8 billion tonnes, assuming the Chinese economy recovers as expected in the second half of the year,” the IEA says in a recent report.

“This global total would match the annual record set in 2013, and coal demand is likely to increase further next year to a new all-time high.”
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I can remember coal being delivered to our house when I was a child in Alabama.  By the time I started school that was no longer the case for my family.  However, even later I can recall the haze of Birmingham as coal was used in the steel mills.  Gas eventually replaced coal. Space heaters were mostly used before people had central furnaces. 

When I moved to the country over 20 years ago I used propane gas to heat the furnace.  About ten years ago I bought an efficient wood-burning stove and have been using firewood I harvested from the several acres of trees on my property.  I rather enjoy the exercise of cutting and splitting the wood.