Changing course: Poland’s energy in 2023

The year 2023 brought record renewables growth and fossil fuels decline all across Europe. EU coal generation fell by 26% in 2023 (-116 TWh) to its lowest level ever (333 TWh). Coal plant closures temporarily slowed during the energy crisis, but coal’s structural decline continues. A fifth of the EU’s coal fleet is estimated to shut down by 2025.

Despite the positive developments, a dark cloud is still hanging over Poland’s energy future. Poland is one of just three EU Member States that have not submitted a draft National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), due last year in June 2023. For years, experts have been calling for an update of the NECP and Poland’s Energy Policy until 2040 (PEP2040),  a reevaluation of the unrealistic 2049 coal phase out date, and the transposition of key European legislation such as the 2018 Clean Energy Package. 

Security is now the focus of almost any energy discussion in Central and Eastern Europe. Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have shown that distributed generation and interconnection can provide resilience in times of war. Poland needs to move away from centralised power system planning with single points of failure like Bełchatów, where one incident almost led to a country-wide blackout in 2021.

The gas expansion plans of the previous government are not a secure replacement for coal — not only because of their centralised nature, but also because the gas will have to be imported. Regardless of the supplier, Poland will always be prone to global fuel price fluctuations, contract renegotiations, and competition from more wealthy buyers, as experienced by Pakistan in 2022 and 2023. Pressure on global gas markets is increasing, as the Biden administration moves to suspend approvals for liquified natural gas (LNG) exports responding to research on the negative climate impacts of LNG. Putting Poland’s energy security in the hands of imported LNG is a security threat in itself.

Poland’s appetite for gas was fueled mainly by worries about power system balancing. However, data from 2023 shows that Poland’s electricity system can already manage high renewable shares. Hourly shares of renewable electricity have peaked at 66%, far exceeding the 50% barrier that was treated by some as impenetrable. A third of the hours in 2023 already showed a renewable electricity share above 32%, the still-official 2030 target.

Windless winter nights will still require support from a peaking power source. But even if that peaking capability comes from gas, this would be a completely different role for gas compared to a baseload one that is outlined in the previous PEP2040. The replacement of large-scale gas units with smaller ones that are able to ramp their generation up or down more quickly would result in lower gas consumption, lower emissions and higher system flexibility.

Multiple sources of flexibility are available for power system operators: including demand side flexibility, in which consumers shift their demand (e.g. heat pump usage, electric vehicle charging, industrial processes) onto times of lower system load, battery and pumped-hydro storage, and peaking generators such as open-cycle gas units. Interconnection and grid expansion contribute to higher flexibility as well, making it easier to transport electricity from places where it’s generated to places where it’s consumed.  Gas was assumed to be the default solution for power system balancing, but its role might soon be declining. Wind and solar are complementing each other throughout the year, reducing the need for seasonal electricity storage and gas power generation.