Energy Production in Stip

As I arrived at my apartment, the car stopped in front of a pile of wood being split by several muscular young men.  The next day, I asked my landlord about it and he said that many of buildings in the neighborhood and indeed throughout the city of Stip burned wood for het in the winter.  In fact the apartment I am in is heated in this manner.  This interesting fact is related to the geopolitical situation of the area and ultimately impacts the climate.

A couple of years ago Russia's monopoly on natural gas supply was brought to the attention of the world when the supply was shut off.  Macedonia will never have to deal with this possibility because the country is not on the pipeline.  Macedonia gets all of it's electrical power from the dams on rivers that run through the country.  Some people heat their homes with this electricity.  My lights, hat water and stove are powered this way.  But when it gets cold, the water in the radiators will be heated by the wood that I had seen when I arrived.

I have already experienced some of the results of this system.  Sitting in my living room with the window open, my eyes started to become irritated.  As I looked out the window, I saw that family across the street cooking over an open fire, with the smoke wafting toward my apartment.  Another result of burning so much wood is more extreme climate swings than in the past.  The claim is made that as the forests disappear from the mountains of Macedonia, the winters get colder and the summers hotter.  My landlord claims that burning wood is better and it does seem rather quaint, but the consequences are far ranging.