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Toma Gajauskiene, a 25-year-old Lithuanian language teacher, feels that she's drowning in unpaid heating bills for her apartment in a high-rise building. She earns some 1,200 litas ($460) per month and has a small child and unemployed husband to support. "Last December was not too cold, but the heating bill stands at 500 litas, almost half of what I make," Gajauskiene said. "For January the bill will be at least double, but I simply cannot pay more than 300 litas for heating because my family will not have money to buy food." Lithuanians also pay more for heating due to insulation problems stemming from the Soviet era. In the years after World War II, some 80 percent of Lithuania's population moved in less than a decade from villages to cities, where they were placed in Soviet apartment blocks hastily and without regard for efficient insulation. "To the Soviets, it was easier to build new towns and concrete multi-story houses with thin walls and then heat them without counting energy costs. Gas and oil was free those days, but now it's simply outrageous," said Vytautas Stasiunas, head of the Lithuanian District Heating Association. Nearly all of Lithuania's leaders have vowed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in energy-saving housing renovations
-- promises that have gone unfulfilled. "There are dozens of awful mistakes made in the energy sector by each and every cabinet since independence. These mistakes are affecting everybody in this country," Stasiunas said. Not surprisingly, Lithuanians -- who have one of the lowest personal income levels in the 27-member EU
-- aren't waiting around and are searching for alternatives. Vytas Ratkevicius, who lives in Uzupis, a cobblestoned neighborhood in downtown Vilnius, recently switched off his central heating. "We decided to install wood-burning equipment after the sharp increase in gas prices. It's obvious that gas prices will continue to go up, and we're simply not ready to pay for this," he said. Ratkevicius purchases his wood from Nerijus Pienelis, who says that demand is growing every year. "It used to be remaining farms and villages where people used my production," he said. "Now most of the wood goes to the national capital, where even rich people burn it." Likewise, Ivan Soloduchin, owner of small heating solutions company in Vilnius, says he can't keep up with orders to help people shut down gas boilers and replace them with firewood boilers or heat pumps. Heating a private home of up to 100 square meters (1,070 square feet) requires up to 20 cubic meters of birch wood. That comes to less than 2,300 litas ($880) for a five-month heating season. Natural-gas users in the same size property would pay up to $500 during a particularly cold month. "I'm getting up to 10 orders per week, and clients keep on coming even in the middle of winter," Soloduchin said. "Ten years ago owners of new houses wouldn't even look my way since firewood was considered dirty and old-fashioned
-- everyone wanted gas boilers. Now things have changed."
[Associated
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