Polish Briefing: The government to handle the plan to separate the coal assets

What goes on in Poland on the 12th of April.

The government to handle the plan to separate the coal assets

– Next week, we will send a revolutionary project to restructure the energy sector for government work. It assumes the separation of coal companies and giving State Treasury companies a new breath – announced Minister of State Assets Jacek Sasin on RMF FM.

The separation of coal assets and the creation of the so-called coal reserve in the form of the National Energy Security Agency will allow the operation of coal-fired power plants, which cannot cope with market competition in the face of the stricter climate policy regulations. At the same time, however, it will reduce the burden on electricity companies, which, deprived of coal assets, will be able to compete more effectively in the sector of low- and zero-emission sources.

According to the deputy prime minister, this process will last until 2050. – In the agreement we want to include in the social contract with trade unions and social partners, we are talking about 2049, as the year in which we will abandon energy generation from coal – added Sasin. – This project assumes, first of all, the separation of coal-fired power plants from the existing companies and “creating a separate entity and giving the same state-owned and energy companies such a new breath – the possibility of obtaining financing also for new investments,” stated the Deputy Prime Minister.

– There will be a separate company, a separate entity, due to the separation of coal assets from these companies. (…) We want to obtain the consent of the European Commission to recapitalize them so that the costs do not translate into energy prices for consumers – said Minister Sasin on RMF FM radio. In his opinion, the losses of coal companies result from the climate policy. – The climate policy adopted by the European Union makes coal generation very expensive today – he argued.

– I’ll picture it. Today, producing one megawatt of energy from coal entails the costs of emission charges for CO2 emissions, which are higher than the cost of fuel, i.e. PLN 130, we pay for coal burned to generate this energy, and PLN 160 are climate fees – the minister noted. He stressed that these fees were constantly growing. – Poles would simply pay huge electricity bills if we continued to use coal as energy fuel. Experts have calculated that in 10 years these bills would be PLN 250 per year for the average Pole – said Minister of State Assets Jacek Sasin.