In the cold period of the year, the Moldovans heat only half of the inhabited area, shows a study by the National Bureau of Statistics concerning energy consumption in domestic households. However, even if one of the country’s objectives is to reduce power and heat consumption, thermal insulation works were performed in only 50% of the dwellings covered by the study, IPN reports.

Svetlana Bulgac, division head at the Bureau, said 53.7% of the dwellings in urban areas are connected to the centralized heating system. 21% have autonomous heating systems powered by gas or electricity, while 5.7% have autonomous heating systems powered by wood or coal. 17.5% have individual stoves, while 2.1% do not have heating systems.

Some 56.1% of the people in urban areas use individual stoves, 22.4% are connected to the centralized heating system, while 20.4% have autonomous heating systems. On April 1, 2016, 1.1% of the homes didn’t have heating systems at all.

53.0% of the urban dwellings have no system to heat water and only 13.2% are conceded to the centralized system. In villages, 77.6% have no water heating system, 22.3% use autonomous systems, while 0.1% are connected to the centralized water heating system.

Svetlana Bulgac said the study revealed that the housing sector of Moldova is very old. 79.3% of all the dwellings were built before 1990. During the last few years, the number of erected apartments has constantly decreased.

Attending the study launch, Alexander Darras, of the EU Delegation to Moldova, said the European Union has been very active in the energy sector of Moldova through the Energy and Biomass Project. “We are so involved in the biomass sector because this is a unique chance for Moldova to diversify its energy sources and to develop the energy sources at the local level. In this regard, we installed a number of biomass heating systems. Those from agriculture who want to provide biomass fuel are supported by the EU. The given project is really comprehensive and by this we want to create a biomass market here, in Moldova, so that when it is completed we could say that biomass became a key element in energy production,” he stated.

Alexandre Darras added that Moldova set ambitious goals concerning renewable sources of energy – to increase the consumption of such energy by 20% until 2020. All the public institutions in Moldova pledged to contribute to achievement of this objective with the support of a number of development partners.

In the conference, it was noted that Moldova managed to conduct a comprehensive study of energy consumption, being a model of good practices that can be borrowed by other countries.