08 January 2025

Where the Wind Blows, Prosperity Grows in Poland

By Michal Zablocki

Wind turbines offer us the chance to use local resources and become permanently independent of fossil fuels. Yet, Andrzej Duda is once again missing an excellent opportunity to secure our future, to the detriment of Poles and the economy.

We all want to live in a beautiful, safe and prosperous country. We want clean air, a flourishing environment and a stable future for our children. We also need a healthy landscape.

But at the COP 29 climate summit in Baku, President Duda told news outlet Gazeta Wyborcza: ‘I have always found the issue of windmills in areas where people live controversial (…); where people want to enjoy a beautiful landscape, I find it very controversial.’

If the president had taken a tour of the Turów energy complex, where a hole in the ground covering an area of 24 square kilometres is buried, engulfing nearby houses, he would have seen what a controversial landscape really looks like. 

In Poland’s coal regions, mud, dust and dirt reign. During the day, people have to deal with pollution and noise, and at night they have to put up with harmful light, as these complexes operate 24 hours a day. Air pollution continues to contribute to 35,000 premature deaths in Poland each year, mainly as a consequence of cardiovascular disease and cancer arising from the burning of coal and other fuels. Every winter, Polish villages and towns break world records for smog.

Controversial is how Turow was depriving our neighbours of water and destroying their homes, which resulted in Czechia’s complaint to the European Commission and pricey penalties for the Polish government. In total, we paid EUR 113.5 million out of our own taxpayer pockets – almost a quarter of what the former Walbrzych Coal Basin, located near Turow, receives from the EU’s Just Transition Fund for its development.

In other words: the citizens of Poland effectively financed the government’s destruction of our landscape — money that could have been used to improve the safety and well-being of Polish people.

Mariusz Musiałowski, the mayor of Kleczew—a town in eastern Greater Poland transitioning away from coal—doesn’t forget what is actually destroying the landscape. He recently shared with me that open-cast lignite mining has left the town with a lunar-like landscape: nothing grows on the municipality’s land, and reclamation efforts have rendered the soil unusable. 

“The only thing that can grow there today are windmills,” Musiałowski remarks. He is frustrated by the arbitrary and ill-considered phobias of politicians who have deprived his municipality and residents of income by prohibiting the construction of new wind power stations. In Kleczew, wind turbines are not controversial at all; they are a practical way to clean up the landscape and secure a better future for the residents.

Windmills bring more economic growth

The village of Budziszów Wielki in the municipality of Wądroże Wielkie recently won the competition for the most beautiful village in Lower Silesia. There are elegantly restored churches, renovated monuments and well-maintained roads. The mayor, Elżbieta Jedlecka, proudly speaks of the windmill-dotted landscape, which has become an important source of revenue for the region’s development.

The municipality had plans to install even more turbines, but unfortunately new investments and thus more revenue for the municipal budget were blocked by the 10H distance rule and the anti-windmill law. Instead of helping to beautify other villages, these laws are freezing developments across Poland.

In the windmill-famous town of Potęgowo, Pomerania, home to dozens of wind turbines, mayor Dawid Litwin boasts a modern nursery and kindergarten built in the Scandinavian style. The facility would be the envy of many wealthy towns. 

Thanks to income from windmills, the municipality has also renovated a school, renewed roads, pavements and street lighting, and bought two modern fire engines. The wind companies, in addition to supporting local cultural events, sponsor extra language and robotics classes for the children. 

This is how you take care of our future: by embracing clean, modern technology that benefits people instead of harming them. This is what our president should prioritise,so that as many people as possible can enjoy it. 

The president’s support for fossil fuels threatens our future

Supporting the fossil fuel lobby works to the detriment of Poland and its citizens. Burning coal contributes to illness and death for Poles. Oil, gas and nuclear energy (though not a fossil fuel, nuclear development is so slow that it leads us to continue relying on fossil fuels instead of investing in renewable energy), are mainly imported, which unnecessarily drains state funds, instead of supporting investment at home and keeping profits within Polish communities. Until recently, we imported gas and coal from Russia, indirectly funding Putin’s war.

We all know that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are destroying the climate, the effects of which we feel every year in the form of snowless winters, prolonged droughts destroying our farmers’ livelihoods, and sudden, devastating floods such as the one in Lower Silesia last year. Most people find it both controversial and unnecessary to further damage our landscape by continuing to support fossil fuels.

The restrictive distance rule is our main obstacle to shared benefits, clean renewable energy and wealthy municipalities that are able to secure the future of their residents. Signed by President Duda in 2016, this rule has blocked the development of onshore wind energy for years. Although amended in 2023, the rule still falls short of the compromise reached by parliament, industry, and community organizations, and remains far behind the norm set by other European countries, which are swiftly advancing their wind energy investments.

A draft of a new wind energy law, which has widespread support for its potential to drive the country’s development, will soon be presented to parliament. However, it is anticipated that President Duda will veto it, making the upcoming presidential election even more critical for our future prosperity.

We must ensure that the next president of Poland will work to secure a brighter future for our children, which means supporting the growth of onshore wind energy.