I live in one of those countries. Heat waste is a big problem, you can sometimes see where the heat pipes are because of melted snow above them. Many houses are poorly insulated as well and lose even more energy.

Central heating, as we call it, is infamous for being rather inflexible and often expensive. I used to pay up to 20% of my salary for heat during colder winters. I now live in an apartment building with its own soil-ethanol geothermal heating and my heating bills are 10% of what it used to be.

Many heating plants still burn oil products to make heat, and those are often expensive. There has been a big push to switch to locally produced biomass to cut costs.