Construction work on what was supposed to have been Poland’s last newly built coal-fired power station is now being dismantled. The decision comes after the project has already cost state-controlled firms more than 1.5 billion (roughly €330 million), prompting questions about wasteful investment.
The site, known as Ostrołęka C, is now set to be turned into a gas-fuelled plant instead – part of a broader shift taking place in Poland away from the country’s current reliance on coal.
Construction of the planned 1,000 MW coal-powered unit was initially frozen by state-owned firm Energa in 2012, due to insufficient funds as well as a shift away from fossil fuels in European climate policy.
At the time, however, already around 200 million zloty had been invested and tens of thousands of hectares of forest had been cut down to make room for new roads. The plan was then rebooted when the coal-friendly Law and Justice (PiS) government came to power in 2015.
Funding was initially secured from Enea, also a state-controlled company. The tender was won by US firm GE Power, for a 6 billion zloty project to be completed by 2023. The investment was the largest in eastern Poland in three decades at the time, even before costs were revised up to 8-9 billion zloty.
PGE, Poland’s biggest energy player, briefly also considered participation in early 2019 but had withdrawn by November, around the time when the project’s patron, Krzysztof Tchórzewski, ceased to be energy minister.
Later, in 2020, a deal was signed with Poland’s state-owned petrol giant Orlen to cooperate on a modified gas-fuelled plant on the Ostrołęka site. In December – as Enea announced that it was abandoning the project – Orlen confirmed that it would work on the new gas unit with Poland’s largest oil and gas company, PGNiG.
Now, the dismantling of the superfluous parts of the coal unit has started one month ahead of schedule, according to local news site moja-ostroleka.pl.
The plant’s two 120-metre concrete cooling towers – which have become a symbol of the investment used by opposition politicians as a press conference backdrop as well as Greenpeace activists (see main photo) – are being slowly taken apart due to safety concerns.
Ostrołęcki Manhattan do rozbiórki.
Najpierw miliard na budowę, teraz miliony na burzenie. Bo K.Tchórzewski chciał węgla. Ostrołęka C to fenomen: elektrownia o efektywności 0 proc. opalana pieniędzmi. pic.twitter.com/rcgo9A4zNh
— Jacek Gądek (@JacekGadek) March 10, 2021
Scrap from the deconstruction process will be used for road building or sold off for other purposes, but only a small part of the funds used for the project will be recovered. Energa and Enea had already written off construction costs of 1 billion zloty, and are also set to lose a further 650 million in loans as well as other liabilities.
“These two towers are a monument to stupidity and mismanagement,” said Marcin Kierwiński, a member of parliament for the opposition Civic Coalition (KO), reports Forsal.
“Those guilty of this gigantic waste must be brought to justice,” said Kierwiński, who along with other opposition MPs demanded that Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki present information about the losses of state-owned companies during the next session of parliament.
In a radio interview on Friday, Tchórzewski, the former minister, was unapologetic about his earlier support for the project. It was “based on the assumption that the coal-fired power industry in Poland would function until 2060”, rather than 2049, as the government subsequently agreed.
“Accelerating the transformation [away from coal] is spending money on a healthier climate in Poland. If that means wasting money, then yes,” he told RMF FM.
Main image credit: Dominik Werner/Greenpeace Polska/Flickr (under CC BY-ND 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
