Report: Poland to announce coal mine closures
By
EUOBSERVER
27-07-2020
Poland's
state-owned coal-mining firm, Polska Grupa Górnicza (PGG), is to announce
sweeping mine closures following talks with trade unions on Tuesday, industry
sources told the Reuters news agency. Reductions in output could be in the 10
percent to 50 percent range, amid ideas to phase out coal power in the Silesia
region entirely by 2036, the two sources said. Poland produces 80 percent of
its electricity from the CO2-pollluting source.
Poland bails out coal, yet wins access to EU climate
funds
Published
on 21/07/2020, 3:11pm
Warsaw can get EU money allocated for greening the
economy, despite having no plan to exit coal or commitment to the bloc’s 2050
net zero emissions goal
By Chloé
Farand
Poland has been given a green light to access EU
money designed to reach the bloc’s 2050 carbon neutrality goal – without having
signed up to the target.
While the
Polish government announced a bailout for its ailing coal mining sector at
home, prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki watered down climate conditions on EU
funds during a marathon meeting in Brussels.
In the
early hours of Tuesday morning, EU leaders agreed on the structure of a
historic €1 trillion budget to 2027 and a €750 billion recovery package from
Covid-19 – 30% of which is to be spent on climate-related projects. The details
still need to be thrashed out by European lawmakers and ministers.
The deal
follows five days of acrimonious debate. The key battlegrounds were the
proportion of grants versus loans in the recovery package and conditions on
climate goals and the rule of law.
The final
agreement links the budget and recovery package to the EU commitment to achieve
climate neutrality by 2050 and to contribute to the 2030 emissions target,
which EU leaders agreed “will be updated before the end of the year”.
Johanna
Lehne, a policy advisor at think tank E3G who has been following the EU Council
meeting, told Climate Home News, the deal “paves a way for a green and
resilient recovery,” but “it also lost some of its climate credentials along
the way”.
Vulnerable
states urge EU to link recovery funds to tougher 2030 climate target
A Just
Transition Fund, to help regions reliant on polluting industries diversify
their economies, was cut from a proposed €37.5 billion to €17.5 billion.
EU Council
leader Charles Michel sought to make the support conditional on member states
committing to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
However
under the final deal Poland, the only holdout against net zero, is eligible for
50% of its allocated funds without changing its climate stance.
Prime
minister Morawiecki claimed it as a win, while promising Poland was “building
[its] plan to achieve carbon neutrality”.
Poland will
receive a total of €125 billion in grants from EU funds over the next seven
years, Morawiecki said – calling the agreement “the best possible deal for the
whole of Europe”.
Robert
Tomaszewski, a senior energy analyst at Warsaw-based think tank Polityka
Insight, agreed it was a Polish victory. But he warned the government was
“losing diplomatic capital” by resisting climate commitments.
Far from exiting
coal, the Polish ministry of state assets announced plans on Friday to throw
the industry a lifeline. It will create a $33 million strategic reserve of hard
coal – propping up demand for coal mining, which it said had been plunged into
a “very serious crisis”.
For
Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk, an analyst at Forum Energii, Warsaw was simply
buying time “to find a way to sell the target domestically” to a polarised
government and powerful mining unions.
The country
faces an even bigger challenge if the EU approves to a proposal to increase its
2030 emissions reduction target from 40% to 50-55%. “That would mean huge
changes in just 10 years and no place for coal. Poland has no idea of how to
get there,” she said.
The
agreement among EU leaders will now be debated and voted by the European
Parliament – with climate observers hoping European lawmakers will strengthen
the agreement’s climate provisions.
Rebekka
Popp, a researcher for the environmental think tank E3G, told CHN lawmakers
will have to address the risk of Poland “still being able to access a share of
the Just Transition Fund to prop up a coal industry that is fast losing
competitiveness”.
Polish coal
production has been suffering from falling demand, cheaper competition and
accumulated financial losses. Covid-19 outbreaks in the coal mines deepened the
sector’s crisis.
Covid-19
outbreak in Polish coal mines heaps further pain on struggling sector
With
unwanted Polish hard coal piling up in large reserves, the government said it
had brokered a deal with utility companies to purchase coal from state-run
Polska Grupa Górnicza (PGG), Poland’s largest coal company. It also promised to
present a restructuring plan to the mining unions on Thursday which will give
“guarantees on the functioning of profitable units in the longer term”.
Tomaszewski
said the government was “avoiding making tough decisions” on winding down
domestic coal mining at a time of increased tensions with the unions. The
announcement hinted that it could be readying to “tell part of the hard truth”
that some mines will need to close, he added.
Warsaw is
also working on a plan to transform the country’s energy sector which it said
would protect jobs “while guaranteeing the stable functioning of the energy and
mining industries for the next decades”.
According
to leaked documents obtained by Polityka Insight, the plan would see Poland’s
largest state-owned power companies – PGE, Tauron and Enea – merge into a
single group. A new National Energy Security Agency (Nabe) would take over
their coal-fired power plants, allowing the government to manage their gradual
closure.
Tomaszewski
said the move would send “a positive signal” to markets and companies to invest
in clean power sources and “increase the pace of the energy transition” in
Poland. But such a plan would need have to go back to Brussels for approval by
the European Commission under state aid rules.
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