Despite their continuing political strife, both Poland’s old and new political leaders agree on one thing – that the country needs to embrace the green energy transition. From programs introducing nuclear power to the country’s energy mix, to humongous offshore wind farms and to solar energy fields so large that they can actually be seen from space, Poland’s green push is leaping forward.
It’s a challenging shift. The country still relies on coal and suffers from damaging water stress levels. Poland long resisted EU green policies phasing-out coal, arguing that a rapid transition could have negative consequences for its economy, particularly in the country’s southern regions where most mines are located.
Yet climate change, economics and geopolitics are combining to produce a consensus in favor of clean technologies. The country is experiencing long-lasting droughts, sudden heavy rainfalls and harsh storms. These changing weather patterns increase the risk of wildfires, crop failures and water pollution, according to the World Bank. Add in the urgent need to avoid dependency on Russian gas. In recent years, Poland has gone from importing large amounts of natural gas to none.
Pressure from the European Union counts, too. The EU has set ambitious targets for member states to increase the share of renewable energy in their overall energy consumption and Poland committed to these targets. Warsaw remains the biggest net beneficiary of EU funds, which include significant subsidies for green energy. Poland’s Clean Air program subsidizes green energy solutions for homes, powering Europe’s fastest growing market for heat pumps.
Some of results are surprising – and extraordinary. Consider battery production. This year Poland overtook the US as the world’s second largest lithium-ion battery producer after China. South Korea’s LG Energy Solution has built Europe’s largest battery factory in Biskupice Podgórne near Wrocław, and Sweden’s Nortvolt is behind Europe’s largest factory for energy storage systems in Gdańsk.
Another opportunity is hydrogen. Both Brussels and Warsaw hope that the thirst of Europe’s industries for natural gas from Russia could be quenched with domestically produced hydrogen. With an output of about one megaton of gray hydrogen a year, Poland is already the world’s third largest producer.
The goal now is to double-down on hydrogen, to make it green, from renewables and via electrolysis. A dedicated hydrogen agency will oversee the effort that involves hundreds of entities from Poland, North America and Japan.
Despite these positive developments, many challenges remain to be overcome. The Polish grid struggles to accommodate both the increasing clean energy capacity and to store it. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes securing sufficient energy supplies a priority over ensuring that the energy is clean.
Yet a green transition is inevitable. The Polish Development Bank BGK, where I work as an analyst, has launched the 3W Idea financing clean technologies and Poland’s Industrial Development Agency has started the country’s first green fund. At the recent Dubai COP 28, Polish cleantech received a warm welcome.
The EU’s “Fit for 55” package, introduced in July 2021, aims for a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and to make the continent carbon neutral by 2050. A political backlash threatens these goals. Far-right populist parties such as Germany’s AFD, the Netherlands’ Freedom Party, and the Sweden Democrats oppose the phase-out of fossil gas heating, blaming the green measures for high energy prices.
Criticism is sure to mount if voters feel that the green measures will take away their cars or increase heating costs or their taxes. Poland is not immune to these pressures. But after long being a problem child, it suprisingly could end up providing invaluable support for helping Europe turn green.
Maciej Filip Bukowski is a 2022 CEPA James S. Denton fellow, a 2023 International Republican Institute Transatlantic Security Initiative fellow, and an international analysis expert at BGK, Polish development bank. A graduate of Sorbonne and Cornell law schools, he is completing a Ph.D. thesis at the Jagiellonian University on the geopolitics of climate change.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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