Calling Time on Coal: Eastern Greater Poland, tells the story of how one Polish region steeped in coal has rejected the Polish government’s strategy to keep burning coal until 2049 in favour of blazing its own path beyond coal by 2030 to build a brighter future based upon clean, renewable energy.
Poland has the second largest coal industry in the EU, but while the majority of other member states will stop burning the dirtiest of all fossil fuels this decade, Poland has no such plan. That is, except for the coal region of Eastern Greater Poland, which has taken matters into its own hands and plans to be coal free by 2030.
BRUSSELS, 25 OCTOBER 2022 – Czech and German NGOs filed a complaint to the European Commision today, calling on it […]
Poland’s General Director for Environmental Protection waved through an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the country’s Turów coal mine this past Friday, despite expert analysis showing the EIA severely underestimates the amount of groundwater the mine is draining.
While modern district heating systems can significantly contribute to the integration of renewable energy in order to decarbonise our energy system, many of the existing systems in Central and Eastern Europe are still highly inefficient and heavily reliant on fossil fuels, such as oil, fossil gas or coal.
The Czech government has angered local people by accepting 45 million euro in compensation from the Polish government and coal company PGE, in exchange for dropping its lawsuit over their illegally operating Turów coal mine at the EU court of justice (CJEU).
An advisor to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) has said that Poland infringed EU law by extending the licence for its Turow coal mine without carrying out an environmental impact assessment. A final verdict by the CJEU is expected by the spring.
A Warsaw court has ruled that Polish authorities were wrong to implement an Environmental Impact Assessment at PGE’s Turow coal mine with immediate effect. The ruling effectively blocks the highly controversial 23-year licence extension that Polish utility PGE thought it had secured for its mine.
Poland’s Łódź region has announced that the EU’s most polluting coal plant, Bełchatów, will close by 2036 and its mines by 2038.
