Warsaw, Poland’s capital, has probably the largest District Heating Network in Europe. It covers 80% of the city and delivers heat that is generated by combined heat and power plants, most of which burn hard coal. In 2011 the city sold the entire network to French company Veolia for approx 350 million Euro. Since then the network has been poorly maintained. When the more severe winter weather arrived this year, pipes burst leaving whole districts without heat and hot water.
According to the information provided by Veolia Energia Warszawa, the District heating owner, the inhabitants of the Tyniecka street in Warsaw are cut off from heat. And this is only one of many failures today. Another failure occurred on the other side of the Vistula River in Praga Północ, in the area of Jagiellonian street. In total, almost 100 buildings were cut off from the heat supply.
The Warsaw heat supplier was privatized 10 years ago. Many Varsovians then protested against this decision. Today, the Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment appointed a special team for the privatization of the heating network.
“We believe that after so many years Varsovians deserve the answer whether this privatisation, i consider it as one of the biggest scandals of the civic platform, was in the benefit of the city. Was it a good deal?” stated Jacek Ozdoba, the vice minister of climate and environment.
Minister Ozdoba took to Twitter to further describe the problem.
“The District Heating Network was privatised before Euro 2012 football championship, there was no money in the budget to finance all the investment necessary to proceed with the championship. Then the decision was made to sell this company.” he posted.
In addition, the statement of another Civic Platfrom politician clearly shows that the problem is downplayed…
“If we have a pipe, it might break sometimes, well it just breaks. There are pipes and they are bursting… ” – said Dariusz Joński, an MP from the opposition on Public Television.
The city emphasizes, however, that the foreign company has been constantly modernizing the transmission system in the Capital for several years.
In the last two years, the inhabitants of Warsaw have often experienced problems related to the functioning of the city’s infrastructure. With the advent of the harsh winter they found out that the reasons for this state of affairs lie in a deeply buried past.