Investing in Polish coal as a replacement for Russian gas can help ensure Europe’s energy security, says an MP from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
“We want to convince the EU that Polish coal does not have to be a terrible thing for Europe,” Marek Wesoły, who is deputy chair of the parliamentary team for energy, energy transformation and mining transformation, told news service WNP.
“We can strengthen Europe’s energy security with our coal, instead of Russian gas,” he continued. “We can provide this safety buffer to the whole of Europe.”
“I would wait out Europe’s [current] green enthusiasm; coal should become a transition fuel,” said Wesoły. “Pushing out stable energy sources in exchange for unstable ones will result in huge electricity prices in Poland and on the continent, which we can already see. Ordinary people in Europe will not be able to stand it.”
“I hope that we will be able to convince the EU of such a model…[which] would open the way to long-term investment in some of our mines,” he concluded.
🏭 In 2021, the EU produced 57 million tonnes of hard coal (-79% compared with 1990). The number of Member States producing hard coal has decreased from 13 in 1990 to only 2 in 2021: 🇵🇱Poland (96% of the total EU production) and 🇨🇿Czechia (4%).
👉https://t.co/hkSP0cQ6OF pic.twitter.com/qhtuUhhc4e— EU_Eurostat (@EU_Eurostat) May 2, 2022
Poland is proportionally the EU’s biggest user of coal – which generates 70% of its electricity and heats around one-third of its homes – and also its biggest producer alongside Germany.
Of the 57.2 million tonnes of hard coal produced in the EU last year, 96% came from Poland, according to Eurostat, Poland also accounted for 41% of hard-coal consumption in the bloc, followed by Germany at 23%.
Germany, however, remains the leading producer and consumer of brown coal (or lignite), accounting for 46% of the EU’s usage of it last year, with Poland in second place at 19%.
Despite its large coal reserves, Poland has this year struggled to produce enough of the fossil fuel to compensate for a ban on imports from Russia. It has rushed to bring in supplies from other parts of the world and prices skyrocketed.
That led the government to announce this month that it would slow down its previous plans to phase out coal by the end of the 2040s, and that it would instead seek to boost production, including possibly opening new mines.
Speaking to WNP, Wesoły confirmed that, as a member of the parliamentary energy team, he is aware that the state assets ministry is looking into “where investments in the mining industry can be made that will bring us the fastest possible effect”.
“Investments are needed that will quickly bring about an increase in coal extraction,” he added. “In my opinion, there is no other way. And whether the war in Ukraine ends or not will not change the situation. Russian coal should never come back and be imported to Poland and Europe.”
Critics of the ruling PiS party, however, say that it has long been too friendly towards the politically important coal sector, and that its failure to facilitate stronger development of renewables left Poland vulnerable to this year’s energy crisis, as well as resulting in the country having some of Europe’s worst pollution.
Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
