Poland uses 10 million tonnes of coal per year to heat families, or 87% of all coal used in EU families in 2019.
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Poland uses 10 million tonnes of coal per year to heat families, or 87% of all coal used in EU families in 2019.
According to an independent think tank, Warsaw-based Forum Energii, about a portion is mined domestically, while Russia accounted for about 40 percent consistently, or 3. 9 million consistent tons per year.
However, Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February. This means that around 3. 8 million families in Poland who rely on coal for winter heating now face shortages and increases in value.
Reuters reports that even now, in Poland’s past summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as families who fear winter shortages wait days and nights to stock up on fuel to warm up in the communist era. Queues. .
Artur, a 57-year-old retiree, drove Tuesday from Swidnik, about 30 km (18 miles) from the mine in eastern Poland, hoping to buy coal for himself and his family.
“They were installed today, but there is no running water,” he said, after sleeping 3 nights in his small red sedan in a progressive row of trucks, tractors pulling trailers and personal cars.
“It’s beyond imagination, other people sleep in their cars. In the communist era, however, it did not occur to me that we could go back to something even worse.
Energy discontent and coal shortages
It might seem difficult that in coal-rich Poland, some 3 million households will face a winter of energy discontent as coal shortages worsen and costs soar.
But there is a very clever explanation for what is happening in Poland. It began when Poland reluctantly agreed to phase out coal to meet the EU’s carbon emissions targets. In November 2021, Poland also committed at the COP26 climate convention in Glasgow to phase out coal and avoid construction or make an investment in new capacity, according to Deutsche Welle.
Polish coal is expensive for me because it is buried so deeply, which makes Russian coal much more affordable and sold in more domestic pieces.
Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk of Forum Energii said Russian coal is also used in heating plants in the eastern component of Poland, where it cannot be exchanged simply for Polish coal. Russian coal is of higher quality and less sulfur, he told DW.