Linas Jegelevičius
Well, let’s not beat around the bush: this winter will be different – colder and with much scarcer Christmas adornments. When it comes to saving, every bulb counts!
Faced with record-high energy prices, the aftermath of war in Ukraine and the subsequent shake-up of energy markets, many Lithuanian municipalities and state institutions are scrambling to find ways how to keep energy bills on a lower end. Some, however, wonder what the saving limits should be?
Most Lithuanian municipalities already went darker and some have proposed closing water pools for the winter months.
Živilė Pinskuvienė, mayor of the Širvintos municipality, some 50 kilometres away from Vilnius, says that the local authority will not turn off the lighting in the town, but the lighting time will be shortened in the rural areas.
«There is no other choice, because there are not enough funds to replace the old lamps and there are no opportunities to borrow for the new ones due to the borrowing limits. When it comes to the town, the LED lighting in the city has been replaced. It cost us 170 thousand euros and that paid off over three years, now we save 75 percent of electricity as a result,» she said.
She, however, emphasises that there isn’t much room for saving.
«Let’s just face it: some institutions, like hospitals, just cannot save. Can we save energy in the schools, for example? No. If we do, the children will be cold. Luckily, heat regulators were installed in most of our schools and kindergartens during their renovation four years ago,» she emphasised to BNN.
Unable to purchase remote solar power batteries, the municipality tried to find a way out – to buy electricity from remote solar power plants, but here too it ran into a wall.
«The Ministry of Energy has pushed the brakes – the municipalities must order such services though the Central Public Procurement Information System only. We tried to do that but ended being engulfed in a lot of bureaucratic hurdles,» the mayor said.
She is, however, hopeful that the municipality will handle winter well.
The city of Alytus has already darkened – the street lighting is reduced in the evenings, the same is being done in the rural areas.
«To be honest, the city went dark. The price of electricity in the city instead of 0.08 euro per 1 kWh will now cost 0.44 per 1 kWh. These are not very encouraging numbers. However, in the spring of next year, half of the buildings in Alytus managed by the municipality will be covered with solar power panels. This is a very high indicator. Now, our schools and kindergartens either have or are building and operating them,» Nerijus Cesiulis, mayor of Alytus, said.
Yet Alytus expects heating bills to be half as low as in Vilnius.
As for heat, half of the city’s heat is produced from biofuel. The mayor predicts that in the coming heating season, centralized heat in Alytus will become more expensive by about 20 percent compared to last year’s cold period.
«We had two types of fuel: gas and biofuel, we made decisions. Now we have a private investor of biofuel, from which independent heat suppliers. But we can see the prices of biofuel. We changed a couple of boilers and used stove fuel for heating, which was also done in Vilnius. Our price will probably be half cheaper than in Vilnius. Our price will jump higher in October by some 40 percent, but will likely fall in November. We believe that the price of the season will be 15-20 percent higher than last season,» the mayor said.
Alytus is also set to charge electric car owners for charging their cars – the service was free until now.
«When electricity cost 4 cents, we calculated that it would cost us around 60 thousand euros. We said we could afford that much. However, at the moment, one year’s costs for that amount to about 200 thousand euros. We calculated that we would need to invest one million euros in five years, and we only receive 60 thousand euros from the EU as the partly reimbursement,» the mayor said.
As already reported by BNN.lv, Palanga, a Baltic resort town, and other Lithuanian resorts have already taken on unpopular yet necessary saving measures – some of the streets are dimmer and the coming Christmas holiday season will be modest as never before.
For example, the expenses for the lighting of Palanga and Šventoji, a Baltic settlement some 20 kilometres away from Palanga, increased by 84.5 thousand euros, or by 165 percent for the first eight months of this year, expenses for managing the resort – by 176.4 thousand euros, also over the period.
However, that is nothing compared to the mounting energy bills of the local water companies that already sent Mayday calls.
«The situation is exceptionally difficult…The consequences of inflation and the increase in the price of energy resources for our region and resorts are just very painful and disastrous,» Šarūnas Vaitkus, the mayor of Palanga, has told Bnn.lv
To alleviate the heating burden, the Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, has recently voted in favour of keeping the current zero VAT rate on district heating for two more heating seasons to help mitigate a surge in heating bills, a measure that is estimated to cost the state over 110 million euros.
The Lithuanian Energy Ministry has come up with an energy saving plan that is expected to help the country save 800 million euros and 20 percent in energy use over two years.
Meanwhile, the ministry’s proposal to limit the maximum speed on motorways to 110 km/h for an additional two months – from October through May – has been removed from the plan as excessive.
Although energy saving in the public sector is mandatory, but not possible for everyone, the country’s medics and educators insist.
«It used to be common practice that multimedia projectors are not always switched off, teachers will have to be reminded to do it. Further, if there are kettles in classrooms, we will encourage people to go to the canteen to drink tea or coffee. Yet the saving measures we have are limited,» Dainius Žvirdauskas, president of the Association of School Leaders, says.
According to Lithuania’s National Commission for Energy Control and Prices (VERT), the price of heating in October will increase by 140 percent in Kaunas and 90 percent in Klaipėda compared to the same period last year.