This is not good news for the environment. “Such a rush in summer, everyone who wants coal, we had never seen that,” says Frithjof Engelke, a Berlin supplier of black stones that have become rare commodities in the capital.
The dreaded shortage of Russian gas in the wake of the war in Ukraine has caused an unexpected enthusiasm among individuals for this method of heating, despite its harmfulness. In Berlin, 5,000 to 6,000 homes still heat with coal, a very small fraction of some 1.9 million homes, says the city.
They are often elderly people, sometimes entirely dependent on this fuel and living in old dwellings that have never been renovated, or lovers of the heavy heat emanating from old stoves. But this year, new customers have arrived “en masse”