Economic & Political Pressures Inexorably Flattening Poland's Coal Sector, But Gov Still Waffling
In Poland, the nation’s once-mighty coal industry is legend — and a curse. Poland touts itself as one of the major coal-producing countries of the 20th century, and its mining history is tightly interwoven with its modernization. In the communist era, the gritty hard-coal industry enabled a prostrate nation to rise from the ruins of World War II. Coal-fired power plants fueled the country’s reconstruction, including its energy-intensive heavy industries such as metallurgy, shipbuilding, and chemicals. Coal exports brought Poland precious foreign currency revenue. The sector reached its height in 1979 when 420,000 mine workers extracted 201 million tons of lignite and black coal.
But the 21st century and the free market have been brutal to the fuel source that still generates 74 percent of the country’s power — by far the highest share in Europe. Even though Poland produces more coal than any other nation in the European Union, the industry’s inefficiencies and plummeting global prices have reduced its 70 mines in 1990 to about 25 today; in that same period, the number of miners has plummeted from 388,000 to 80,000. And now, with the European Union’s ramped-up drive to decarbonize by 2050, coal has gone from being a cornerstone of the economy to a millstone around Poland’s neck.
As economic forces squeeze the Polish coal industry, the arch-conservative government — long the industry’s chief booster — is caught in a bind. Increasingly aware that this obsolete industry has no future, the government coddles it with one hand while making changes that presage its demise with the other. Coal is costly, polluting, a bad investment, unpopular, and makes Poland a thorn in the EU’s side. But the EU wields significant power over the fate of coal in Poland, including implementing a rapidly escalating price on carbon and exercising control over billions of dollars in funds to ease the country’s transition from fossil fuels.
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The government has complained bitterly to the EU about the escalating price of carbon, and has even threatened to quit the carbon trading scheme and create its own kinder carbon-pricing regime. But participation in the EU scheme is compulsory: Poland’s exit from the carbon market might well jeopardize its membership in the EU. “The politicians can keep screaming as loudly as they like, but the economy faces dire consequences if we don’t phase out coal as quickly as possible,” says Joanna Flisowska, head of the climate and energy unit of Greenpeace Poland. A coal phaseout by 2035, paired with dynamic growth of renewable energy sources, is the only way forward for the Polish economy, argues Greenpeace.
Smog is fueling disaffection with coal among growing numbers of Poles. In Europe, only the air quality in Bulgaria ranks lower than Poland’s. In the hardest-hit cities and towns, people sometimes wear masks in the streets and keep their windows tightly shut. An estimated 48,000 Poles a year perish from illnesses related to air quality, and organizations like Smog Alert have rallied opposition to air pollution and turned it into a political issue. Greenpeace estimated that nearly two-thirds of the country’s kindergartens are in heavily polluted areas.
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https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-pressures-mount-polands-once-mighty-coal-industry-is-in-retreat
