East Europeans fear climate policy pinch

By Anna Mudeva

GORNO OSENOVO, Bulgaria (Reuters) - Many pensioners in the Bulgarian village of Gorno Osenovo, who go to bed with the sunset and wake up at sunrise, have never heard of carbon dioxide. They don't get electricity either.

But a new plan by Brussels to make European Union energy companies pay for the carbon dioxide they emit from 2013 threatens to lift energy costs to the point where building grids to remote places like Gorno Osenovo would be impossible.

Perched on the hillsides of the Rila mountain in south-western Bulgaria, Gorno Osenovo is among a small number of villages in the Balkan country that have never been electrified.

Official data denies the existence of such places but the villagers say their battery-powered radio players have been reporting about more hikes in food and fuel prices.

"How can I afford to pay electricity and water bills with my pension of 100 levs ($80)?" said 83-year-old Ilinka Yaneva, fussing around her 19th-century stove.

Governments in eastern Europe, also worried about a backlash and already crippling fuel inflation, have joined forces to oppose the Brussels plan and protect voters incomes are still well below those in the West.

Energy prices in Bulgaria, the poorest EU nation and other former communist countries in eastern Europe were subsidized and kept artificially low for decades.

The majority of people in eastern Europe get their power mainly from coal -- which has the highest emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) among fossil fuels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.