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OPPOSITION PARTIES SLAM GOVT OVER ENERGY POLICIES

 

Opposition parties on Saturday castigated the government for preferring fossil fuels to renewables in attempts to handle the energy shortfall. Instead of felling more trees, insulating housing would be a better solution, LMP co-leader Máté Kanász-Nagy told a press briefing. He said plans were to destroy forests for firewood instead of exploiting green solutions to the energy crisis. Instead of “heating Hungarian streets with Russian gas”, an insulation scheme would help to reduce bills while also helping to create tens of thousands of jobs, he said, adding that 650,000 homes could be insulated by the end of the current parliamentary cycle in 2026. The LMP politician also claimed possible savings of 420,000 tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions and 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
On Sunday, LMP launched a petition against the measures. LMP lawmaker Bernadett Bakos said on Sunday that no other government in Europe was trying to ease the energy crisis by “cutting down forests”. The measure is short-term damage control rather than a solution, she told a press conference. The petition garnered 13,000 signatures on the first day, Bakos said. The party is holding a protest in front of the Agriculture Ministry on Tuesday, she said.
Meanwhile, Rebeka Szabó, Párbeszéd’s co-leader, said the ban on wind farms should he lifted and the tax on solar panels and heat pumps abolished. In a statement today, she also decried the government’s decree on firewood as “pointless and harmful”, saying Hungary’s native forests were under “serious danger”. The possible consequences of deforestation, she added, were worse air pollution, water shortages and drought.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony has said the energy crisis should be resolved through responsible energy policy rather than “cutting down forests”. The government decree will again allow clear-cutting in protected forests within the boundaries of Budapest, and set back other “hard-won achievements” in their protection, Karácsony said on Facebook. The poorest Hungarians have always been heating with wood, and so were left out of the government scheme to maintain a cap on household energy bills, Karácsony said, calling on the government to provide “substantial support” for those groups. “And they have a duty to consult with us, the local authorities, before they lay waste to our forests,” he said.