WARSAW, Poland

Poles must work harder to save energy, Poland’s climate and environment minister told the media in an interview published on Wednesday.

“I hope that saving is already a habit in Polish homes,” Anna Moskwa told Wprost weekly. “There are rooms that we use less and there we can turn down radiators. Whether there’s a crisis or not, we should save both heat and water. I've implemented a lot of savings solutions myself and it really works,” she added.

The Polish government is working on a system that will allow the freezing of gas and electricity prices for companies and households.

Moskwa told a press conference in Warsaw on Tuesday that Poland would wait for uniform solutions for all European Union countries before making concrete plans.

“We decided to use a mechanism that we would use for sensitive institutions, including hospitals, kindergartens, nurseries, NGOs, orphanages, etc. The whole group will be served by municipalities that will receive money for heat subsidies so that the increase in costs would not be higher than 40%,” Moskwa told Wprost.

"I hope that both the solutions for gas and electricity, developed at the (emergency energy ministers’) meeting on Sept. 9 in Prague, will be the solutions that we propose, blocking at a certain level the way tariffs are set, which due to EU regulations applies to us," Moskwa said.

Several options are reportedly being considered for energy-intensive enterprises, including paying subsidies directly to companies.

Under one proposal, households that use heat from local heating plants will receive a one-off allowance of between 1,000 Polish zloty ($210) and 3,900 zloty ($817), Moskwa said.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, announced at the weekend that energy prices in the EU member state would be controlled below a certain consumption ceiling. He said the threshold would be up to 2 megawatt hours (the average annual household consumption in Poland) or up to 90% of the previous year's consumption. Only after exceeding this threshold would the price of electricity increase.

"It is such an encouragement to save," he said.

Work on the regulation is already underway and its conclusions are to be known within a few weeks.

In parallel, the ministries of state assets and agriculture are working on rules for reducing gas purchase by nitrogen plants and food producers.

Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk said over the weekend that the government cannot allow fertilizer prices to exceed 4,000 zloty ($838) per ton. "I think this week we will present a system to support fertilizer production," he added.