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Meanwhile in Poland it's been 78.2% in 2018, "down" from 78.4% in 2017. And the Polish government has made it clear that coal will remain the basis of energy pr

Meanwhile in Poland it's been 78.2% in 2018, "down" from 78.4% in 2017. And the Polish government has made it clear that coal will remain the basis of energy production here. I'm frustrated as I'm writing this on a train from Berlin to Warsaw. One of the reasons why I chose to travel by train rather than fly was the carbon footprint journey, and I'm cutting it down much less than I should be.

gambiting 7y ago
And don't forget that there's still a huge number of private homes which use coal fired boilers. Even if all coal power plants closed tomorrow, Polish towns would still be consuming huge amounts of coal just to stay warm in winter(and there's practically no regulations about emissions from those, it just goes straight up your chimney).
- c2h5oh 7y ago
  There is a lot of funding available for replacing those - one of the largest chunks of cash provided by eu do far.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Sure, but there's still a lot of people who don't want to, simply because coal is cheaper than both eco-pellets and gas. My grandparents only changed theirs from coal to gas last year, and only because grandpa was getting too old to go and add coal to the boiler every few hours - but they've been complaining about the fortune that the gas is costing them ever since.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      A carbon tax would fix that.
      - gambiting 7y ago
        And one won't be implemented for the same reason why coal boilers haven't been banned yet - "think of the poor people - if they cannot afford their coal for winter how will they stay warm?".
        adrianN 7y ago
        Any serious carbon tax scheme proposed is income neutral; a tax-and-dividend system.
        gambiting 7y ago
        Can you explain how it would work in this case please?
        godtoldmetodoit 7y ago
        You tax carbon at say, $40 a ton. You then distribute any revenue from the tax as a dividend to every adult in the country. It results in a net increase in purchasing power for your most vulnerable citizens.
rossdavidh 7y ago
Different places change at different rates. One thing that will happen, however, is that as some of the big coal customers switch, the economies of scale for coal production change, and it becomes even more expensive. So, coal will eventually become too pricey even for places like Poland, even though "Poland" does not bring to mind "summer skies where solar would be competitive" (I may be biased as I've only ever visited Poland around Christmastime).
- oppositelock 7y ago
  Poland's only local energy source is coal, which is why they're so set on using it. Natural gas comes mainly from Russia, and they don't have the capital for nuclear. Solar isn't a good option in Poland due to the long winter nights, and it's not a particularly windy country for wind generation.
  - xxpor 7y ago
    >they don't have the capital for nuclear I find that kind of hard to believe.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      You find it hard to believe that one of Europe's poorer countries has trouble finding the €20bn over 10 years it will cost? The UK is having trouble affording that for Hinckley C.
      - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
        Poland isn't "one of Europe's poorer countries" and many countries that operate nuclear power plants are poorer than Poland (such as: Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine)
        piva00 7y ago
        I wouldn't throw Brazil in there, Brazil has barely 2 functioning reactors (Angra I and Angra II) with the third one being stalled since 1984, restarted in 2007 and so far has no hope of being finished in time (announced for 2020 but now waiting investments to continue development).
c2h5oh 7y ago
To be fair Poland started with that number being over 98% when communism fell. It's estimated Poland would have to spend >5% of GDP for 20+ years to replace it with nuclear or renewables and it's not a popular idea when you have a populist, global-warming skeptic government and close to 100k people working in coal mining (not that far from 1% of all employed in Poland) tl;dr; unless there is external pressure & funding it's not changing.
- beat 7y ago
  I wonder how many other countries are in Poland's boat? That's some tremendous political resistance to overcome. In American politics, the fate of coal miners is ridiculously overrated. The coal industry employs fewer people than a mid-sized national fast food chain.
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
    Go further east and it's the same. There's also no sun and the gas is expensive or from Russia. Pro west countries don't want to depend on Russian gas. The whole world is complex and energy sector just mirrors it. Hence the change is difficult to overcome and many people don't see or understand why. Everyone would love to be green and carbon free, that's not the question.
lukasm 7y ago
Any yet average person in Poland has a similar carbon footprint.
nineteen999 7y ago
Here in Australia, our current Prime Minister proudly brought in a lump of coal into the Parliament to show how not scary it is. https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...
- Taniwha 7y ago
  And this week blew off the representatives of the Pacific islands that will first to go due to sea level rise, yesterday your deputy PM said that that wasn't a problem because "they come here to pick our fruit" (forgetting that as Oz goes crispy around the edges there wont be any fruit). Frankly you Aussies are a bit embarrassing at the moment, time to get your act together
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    At the moment? We have had seven Prime Ministers in the last ten years. I'm starting to believe we may be well beyond all hope politically speaking. Feels like we are beached as, bro.
    - solstice 7y ago
      There was a mini "scandal" in Germany not long ago during a meeting between the Australian PM and Angela Merkel, when a handout for Merkel had some info about said PM, including his name. Some German newspapers saw that as an embarrassing slight to the Australians but some Aussies on the net said sth along the lines of "well, I think it's understandable with so much turnover during the past few years..."
  - bamboozled 7y ago
    It's also quite stupid considering how vulnerable climate change his country is. Think how badly major heat waves already effect Australian cities and how close to sea level most of Australia is, especially northern parts of Australia. From what I read the PM seems to think he is some how immune to the effects and only smaller island nations will be effected, while simultaneously forgetting that he also lives on something which resembles an island, even if it is a big one. It seems the Australian PM is certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed.
chewz 7y ago
Coal is cheap and available in Poland why not use it? It is a bit hypocritical for Western European countries to move their industrial base to Poland first and then push for green energy as a mean to decrease competitiveness of Polish economy. On the good side Poland is big time afforesting for the last 70 years from 20,8% in 1946 to 30% in 2020. Show me another country in Europe who did so much to sequester CO2 over last 70 years. Also Poland and Czech Republic had decreased its CO2 production by 50% since 1990s - most in the world. Sure, EU money helped a lot but it was Polish jobs and life choices that paid for closing factories and reforming its post-communist dirty heavy industry, sewage treatment plants, agriculture etc. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=CZ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=PL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... So not all bad. PS. Plans for Polish nuclear power plant in Żarnowiec had been abolished post Chernobyl. You never know.. And I wish Poland got rid of coal and better yet cars. But be realistic.

gambiting 7y ago

And don't forget that there's still a huge number of private homes which use coal fired boilers. Even if all coal power plants closed tomorrow, Polish towns would still be consuming huge amounts of coal just to stay warm in winter(and there's practically no regulations about emissions from those, it just goes straight up your chimney).

c2h5oh 7y ago
There is a lot of funding available for replacing those - one of the largest chunks of cash provided by eu do far.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Sure, but there's still a lot of people who don't want to, simply because coal is cheaper than both eco-pellets and gas. My grandparents only changed theirs from coal to gas last year, and only because grandpa was getting too old to go and add coal to the boiler every few hours - but they've been complaining about the fortune that the gas is costing them ever since.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    A carbon tax would fix that.
    - gambiting 7y ago
      And one won't be implemented for the same reason why coal boilers haven't been banned yet - "think of the poor people - if they cannot afford their coal for winter how will they stay warm?".
      - adrianN 7y ago
        Any serious carbon tax scheme proposed is income neutral; a tax-and-dividend system.
        gambiting 7y ago
        Can you explain how it would work in this case please?
        godtoldmetodoit 7y ago
        You tax carbon at say, $40 a ton. You then distribute any revenue from the tax as a dividend to every adult in the country. It results in a net increase in purchasing power for your most vulnerable citizens.

rossdavidh 7y ago

Different places change at different rates. One thing that will happen, however, is that as some of the big coal customers switch, the economies of scale for coal production change, and it becomes even more expensive. So, coal will eventually become too pricey even for places like Poland, even though "Poland" does not bring to mind "summer skies where solar would be competitive" (I may be biased as I've only ever visited Poland around Christmastime).

oppositelock 7y ago
Poland's only local energy source is coal, which is why they're so set on using it. Natural gas comes mainly from Russia, and they don't have the capital for nuclear. Solar isn't a good option in Poland due to the long winter nights, and it's not a particularly windy country for wind generation.
- xxpor 7y ago
  >they don't have the capital for nuclear I find that kind of hard to believe.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    You find it hard to believe that one of Europe's poorer countries has trouble finding the €20bn over 10 years it will cost? The UK is having trouble affording that for Hinckley C.
    - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
      Poland isn't "one of Europe's poorer countries" and many countries that operate nuclear power plants are poorer than Poland (such as: Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine)
      - piva00 7y ago
        I wouldn't throw Brazil in there, Brazil has barely 2 functioning reactors (Angra I and Angra II) with the third one being stalled since 1984, restarted in 2007 and so far has no hope of being finished in time (announced for 2020 but now waiting investments to continue development).

c2h5oh 7y ago

To be fair Poland started with that number being over 98% when communism fell. It's estimated Poland would have to spend >5% of GDP for 20+ years to replace it with nuclear or renewables and it's not a popular idea when you have a populist, global-warming skeptic government and close to 100k people working in coal mining (not that far from 1% of all employed in Poland) tl;dr; unless there is external pressure & funding it's not changing.

beat 7y ago
I wonder how many other countries are in Poland's boat? That's some tremendous political resistance to overcome. In American politics, the fate of coal miners is ridiculously overrated. The coal industry employs fewer people than a mid-sized national fast food chain.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
  Go further east and it's the same. There's also no sun and the gas is expensive or from Russia. Pro west countries don't want to depend on Russian gas. The whole world is complex and energy sector just mirrors it. Hence the change is difficult to overcome and many people don't see or understand why. Everyone would love to be green and carbon free, that's not the question.

lukasm 7y ago

Any yet average person in Poland has a similar carbon footprint.

nineteen999 7y ago

Here in Australia, our current Prime Minister proudly brought in a lump of coal into the Parliament to show how not scary it is. https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...

Taniwha 7y ago
And this week blew off the representatives of the Pacific islands that will first to go due to sea level rise, yesterday your deputy PM said that that wasn't a problem because "they come here to pick our fruit" (forgetting that as Oz goes crispy around the edges there wont be any fruit). Frankly you Aussies are a bit embarrassing at the moment, time to get your act together
- nineteen999 7y ago
  At the moment? We have had seven Prime Ministers in the last ten years. I'm starting to believe we may be well beyond all hope politically speaking. Feels like we are beached as, bro.
  - solstice 7y ago
    There was a mini "scandal" in Germany not long ago during a meeting between the Australian PM and Angela Merkel, when a handout for Merkel had some info about said PM, including his name. Some German newspapers saw that as an embarrassing slight to the Australians but some Aussies on the net said sth along the lines of "well, I think it's understandable with so much turnover during the past few years..."
- bamboozled 7y ago
  It's also quite stupid considering how vulnerable climate change his country is. Think how badly major heat waves already effect Australian cities and how close to sea level most of Australia is, especially northern parts of Australia. From what I read the PM seems to think he is some how immune to the effects and only smaller island nations will be effected, while simultaneously forgetting that he also lives on something which resembles an island, even if it is a big one. It seems the Australian PM is certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed.

chewz 7y ago

Coal is cheap and available in Poland why not use it? It is a bit hypocritical for Western European countries to move their industrial base to Poland first and then push for green energy as a mean to decrease competitiveness of Polish economy. On the good side Poland is big time afforesting for the last 70 years from 20,8% in 1946 to 30% in 2020. Show me another country in Europe who did so much to sequester CO2 over last 70 years. Also Poland and Czech Republic had decreased its CO2 production by 50% since 1990s - most in the world. Sure, EU money helped a lot but it was Polish jobs and life choices that paid for closing factories and reforming its post-communist dirty heavy industry, sewage treatment plants, agriculture etc. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=CZ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=PL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... So not all bad. PS. Plans for Polish nuclear power plant in Żarnowiec had been abolished post Chernobyl. You never know.. And I wish Poland got rid of coal and better yet cars. But be realistic.