Polish capacity market to crowd-out renewables and fund more coal

MEDIA ADVISORY

The Polish grid operator PSE conducted the general certification procedure earlier this week, thereby prequalifying electricity producers for capacity mechanism payments. The certification is an obligatory first step and conclusions sum up how much and what kind of capacities can take part in the bidding process for the first capacity payments within the Polish capacity market for the period 2021-2023. Whilst this certification does not spell out electricity producing technologies which will benefit, it does sum up eligible quantities for the payments and indicates proportions between different technologies.

The structure of the net available capacity of the physical generating units that have been entered in the register, broken down into the basic fuel used:

Among “planned’, or in other words new, units and capacities there is more than 4GW allocated to gas-powered plants, a further 4GW of planned coal-fired plants and only 0,5GW of “others”, a category that includes renewable energy sources.

Joanna Flisowska, Coal Policy Coordinator at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, said:
“It is now clear that the Polish capacity market will not support the clean energy transition in Poland. Instead billions of Euros of public money will be wasted subsidising coal plants. But what’s most alarming is that it risks funding the construction of new coal plants in Poland.” 

“The ongoing negotiations on the Electricity Market Regulation are the last chance of preventing these massive coal subsidies. European Parliament and the Council must stop capacity mechanisms from funding the continuation of this most harmful of fossil fuel addictions, in Poland and elsewhere in Europe and support the swift and just transition to renewables”.

ENDS

Contacts:

Nicolas Derobert, CAN Europe Communications Coordinator nicolas@caneurope.org +32 483 62 18 88
Joanna Flisowska, Coal Policy Coordinator, CAN Europe, joanna@caneurope.org, +48 698 693 170

Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe is Europe’s leading NGO coalition fighting dangerous climate change. With over 150 member organisations from 35 European countries, representing over 1.700 NGOs and more than 40 million citizens, CAN Europe promotes sustainable climate, energy and development policies throughout Europe.