Coal-dependent Poland shifts on wind ahead of climate meeting
WARSAW: Restrictive legislation introduced by Poland’s rightwing government in 2016 threw a spanner into the works for onshore wind energy, but the easing of some measures now promises to get the sector spinning.
The change comes ahead of the COP24 World Climate Conference that opens December 2 in the southern Polish city of Katowice, a coal mining hub long among the main providers of the country’s primary source of both fuel and pollution.
“We’re on the right track,” Janusz Gajowiecki, chairman of the Polish Wind Energy Association (PSEW), told AFP of plans to bring an additional one gigawatt (GW) of wind energy online.
Poland currently has around 6.4 gigawatts of installed wind power, compared to neighbouring Germany, which has around 56GW.
An auction for wind farm licenses to add that one gigawatt of production capacity is set for November 5 and public subsidies will also be available under a new government plan aimed at helping coal- addicted Poland meet European Union ( EU) goals for renewable energy use.
The EU has set itself an overall target of 20 per cent green energy in its mix by 2020. Poland, meanwhile, must boost its overall use of renewable energy to at least 15 per cent by 2020 under EU deals on emissions curbs.
Renewables accounted for 11.3 per cent of Poland’s energy mix in 2016, according to the latest available figures, and a study published last year by the Ecofys consultancy warned that it risks falling short of the 2020 target.
The country of 38 million, with an ever- expanding economy, was likely to have no more than 13.8 per cent of renewables in its energy mix by the end of the decade, Ecofys found.
Warsaw is planning two more auctions for wind energy concessions, which should add another two gigawatts of capacity. — AFP