In Romania's December 2021 census, nearly half of all dwellings reported wood as one of their heating sources, and 493,646 of them — more than every dwelling in Cluj county, the most populous county outside the capital, plus another 127,000 — had no heating of any kind: no boiler, no stove, not even an electric heater.
The census asks every conventional dwelling in the country how it heats itself, and allows more than one answer: a home can have both a gas boiler and a backup wood stove. So the figures above should be read separately, not as slices of one whole — but each of them describes a real part of how Romania keeps warm, sixteen years after joining the European Union.
Every county's hearth
Each hearth shows how a county heats itself. The orange flame rises with the share of dwellings burning wood; the cold band at its base marks the share with no heating at all; a blue thread at the top flags counties where district heating covers a meaningful share. Pick a county for its exact numbers.
- Harghita67%
- Suceava66%
- Botoșani66%
- Vrancea65%
- Mehedinți65%
- Ialomița65%
- Sălaj65%
- Călărași62%
- Tulcea62%
- Covasna62%
- Vâlcea61%
- Caraș-Severin61%
- Teleorman60%
- Gorj60%
- Bistrița-Năsăud59%
- Olt59%
- Vaslui59%
- Giurgiu59%
- Buzău57%
- Neamț57%
- Maramureș56%
- Arad52%
- Dolj52%
- Bacău52%
- Dâmbovița52%
- Bihor51%
- Satu Mare50%
- Argeș47%
- Galați43%
- Alba42%
- Brăila41%
- Iași41%
- Hunedoara36%
- Timiș35%
- Prahova35%
- Mureș34%
- Sibiu27%
- Brașov26%
- Constanța25%
- Cluj24%
- Ilfov15%
- Bucharest2%
Pick a hearth from the list for a county's exact numbers — or start with Harghita, the county with the largest share of wood heating in the country.
See every county as a table
| County | Wood | No heating | District heating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harghita | 66.8% | 4.3% | 3.9% |
| Suceava | 66.2% | 4.4% | 5.0% |
| Botoșani | 65.9% | 5.3% | 6.8% |
| Vrancea | 65.4% | 6.0% | 4.2% |
| Mehedinți | 65.2% | 6.9% | 14.8% |
| Ialomița | 65.1% | 5.1% | 0.0% |
| Sălaj | 64.7% | 3.9% | 0.0% |
| Călărași | 62.4% | 5.9% | 0.2% |
| Tulcea | 62.1% | 7.4% | 4.8% |
| Covasna | 61.5% | 4.6% | 0.5% |
| Vâlcea | 60.8% | 6.3% | 11.4% |
| Caraș-Severin | 60.6% | 6.3% | 0.0% |
| Teleorman | 60.2% | 7.7% | 0.5% |
| Gorj | 59.6% | 5.6% | 1.2% |
| Bistrița-Năsăud | 59.3% | 3.2% | 0.0% |
| Olt | 59.3% | 4.7% | 0.0% |
| Vaslui | 59.2% | 10.2% | 0.2% |
| Giurgiu | 58.6% | 7.3% | 1.7% |
| Buzău | 56.9% | 7.5% | 1.9% |
| Neamț | 56.6% | 7.8% | 0.0% |
| Maramureș | 56.5% | 4.8% | 0.0% |
| Arad | 52.1% | 5.4% | 6.9% |
| Dolj | 52.0% | 4.8% | 11.7% |
| Bacău | 51.5% | 6.3% | 2.4% |
| Dâmbovița | 51.5% | 5.2% | 0.0% |
| Bihor | 50.6% | 4.9% | 23.4% |
| Satu Mare | 50.0% | 6.3% | 0.0% |
| Argeș | 47.0% | 5.0% | 5.5% |
| Galați | 42.8% | 5.7% | 1.7% |
| Alba | 42.5% | 4.5% | 0.0% |
| Brăila | 40.8% | 4.0% | 0.0% |
| Iași | 40.6% | 6.7% | 4.5% |
| Hunedoara | 36.0% | 7.6% | 1.3% |
| Timiș | 35.1% | 1.2% | 16.5% |
| Prahova | 34.8% | 5.5% | 13.1% |
| Mureș | 34.5% | 2.2% | 0.0% |
| Sibiu | 27.3% | 3.9% | 1.2% |
| Brașov | 25.6% | 1.7% | 2.0% |
| Constanța | 24.9% | 5.3% | 12.7% |
| Cluj | 24.3% | 3.0% | 5.2% |
| Ilfov | 15.4% | 5.0% | 0.2% |
| Bucharest | 1.7% | 3.1% | 45.7% |
The capital and its ring
Bucharest shows how much the network matters, not just wealth. The capital has district heating in 45.7% of its dwellings (473,004 of 1,035,803) — the widest coverage in the country, inherited from a system built before 1990 and kept running since. On wood heat, Bucharest sits at the opposite end from Harghita: only 1.7% of its dwellings report it.
Ilfov, the county that surrounds the capital on every side, inherits none of that. District heating reaches just 0.2% of its dwellings (552 of 281,776), and its share with no heating at all — 5.0% — is even higher than Bucharest's (3.1%). The capital's heating network stops, almost entirely, at its administrative border; the suburbs that grew up fast around Bucharest heated themselves on their own, with individual boilers or electric heaters, not by an extension of the network next door.
Many mid-sized Romanian cities gave up the district-heating networks they inherited from before 1990 in the years that followed, worn down by maintenance costs and losses through aging pipes. The hearths above show what filled the gap: where neither piped gas nor district heating arrived, wood became the default — and where even wood wasn't a stable source, some dwellings were simply left with no heating at all.
Data from Romania's 2021 Population and Housing Census (INS, the National Institute of Statistics), table 8.22 (dwelling installations) and table 8.23 (heating method), final results, published on recensamantromania.ro. Figures cover conventional dwellings as of the reference date, 1 December 2021, across the 41 counties and the Bucharest municipality. The heating-method question allows more than one answer, which is why the wood, gas, and district-heating shares don't add up to 100% — a dwelling can report more than one source at once. The "no heating at all" category is exclusive and doesn't overlap with the others.