Poland’s probable new government can shed its reputation as a “climate laggard” but will still struggle to cut emissions quickly, environment and energy groups have said.
The rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), which has ruled Poland since 2015 and has slammed the brakes on climate action at home and in the EU, is unlikely to form a government despite having won the most votes in parliamentary elections on 15 October. Analysts expect a more climate-friendly coalition between the centrist Civic Coalition, the centre-right Third Way and the leftwing Lewica parties.
The three opposition parties have promised to build more clean energy infrastructure, and to cut carbon emissions more quickly than before.
“It’s a landmark moment in modern Polish history,” said Zuzanna Rudzińska-Bluszcz, the head of the Polish branch of ClientEarth, a not-for-profit environmental organisation. “Although our spirits are high, we need to remain mindful about the challenges that lie ahead.”
Civic Coalition, the main opposition party led by Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, says it will move to quickly clean up Poland’s coal-heavy power sector. It aims to generate 65% of electricity from renewable sources and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 75% by the end of the decade, but has not released plans for how to do so.
Lewica has also called for a faster expansion of renewable energy and promised to carry out “a thorough modernisation” of the country’s electricity grids. Third Way, which has only a short section on climate in its manifesto, has campaigned for more energy independence with the slogan “a power plant in every home”.
Joanna Maćkowiak-Pandera, the president of the energy thinktank Forum Energii, said: “There is quite a lot of consistency on energy and climate issues within the parties that are likely to form the government. The level of ambition is also high.”
But the broad coalition may struggle to agree on policies to reach their targets, analysts say, particularly on topics outside renewable energy. They are also likely to face opposition from coal workers’ unions and a president with veto powers until 2025.
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“The new government will have to deal with ongoing challenges to the energy agenda – including high energy prices,” said Szymon Kardaś, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. In its manifesto, Civic Coalition has said it will freeze gas prices next year at their 2023 levels for households and sensitive customers.
Poland, which burns more coal than any other country in Europe, has for years resisted EU policies that cut emissions. In July, the government filed cases with the European court of justice to stop EU rules that would tighten the carbon market, set targets to reduce emissions and ban sales of cars that burn fossil fuels.
At home, PiS and its minor partner parties alarmed doctors and scientists with a promise to mine coal until 2049. The International Energy Agency expects rich countries to quit coal by 2030 if they are serious about keeping global heating to 1.5C.
But another wing of PiS took a more pragmatic approach, with the partial liberalisation of a de facto ban of new onshore wind power projects that had been imposed in 2016, according to Michał Smoleń, who runs the energy and climate programme at the thinktank Fundacja Instrat.
The government also pushed subsidy schemes for some clean technologies such as rooftop solar panels and heat pumps even as its rhetoric on climate action hardened. Poland’s heat-pump market recorded the biggest growth of any EU member state in 2022, according to industry data, as people in polluted cities ditched coal-burning stoves and avoided gas boilers because of high energy prices.
“In general the transformation is taking place,” said Rudzińska-Bluszcz. “But in declarations, they treat coal as Polish gold.”
