Photo: Dawid Żuchowicz
In November 2018, the Kowalski family bought one tonne of coal for PLN 1 000 (EUR 235); Ryszard’s monthly pension is PLN 900 (EUR 210). By late February, they had already burned through all of the coal and were using wood scraps donated by friends who found them on the street. With bad windows and poor insulation, much of the heat generated by their koza - a free-standing wood stove that takes its name from the Polish word for goat - is lost to the outdoors. In English, we might call their koza an 'energy hog'.