Mott's Blog

Ninety-nine percent of the Polish Government has been lying to us or is so uninformed that they do not know the difference. Poland's state support of renewable energy from 2005 to date (old law and new law) are state aid under the European Treaty. No doubts and no qualifications. The only Polish leader who was honest and professional in their opinion on this was Malgorzata Krasnodebska-Tomkiel, head of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), for several years.[1] Before the Prime Minister fired her and replaced her with an English teacher, she also was clear that elements of the new law were also state aid. Tomkiel was fired on a Monday that followed the Friday on which the Prime Minister's office received notice of the complaint about the green certificate system from the Commission. This does not mean that the aid under the old law or new law is wrong,, only that it has to be reviewed for consistency with state aid rules designed to minimize the distort...

Poland's politicians have kept up a myth that the EU would allow special assistance arising from the climate and emissions trading scheme to go into modernizing Polish coal-fired power. This - as well as a diversion to general revenue - was the model from the last climate deal (whereby Poland abused the EU funding in ways that were not unnoticed in Brussels). Now the new deal has a big coffer, but the projects must go through the Environmental Investment Bank for approval. Note: EIB gave up on generally supporting coal projects more than a year ago. Thus, we have the situation - entirely expected - where the EIB will not allow this sizable fund to be used to continue projects that emit more than a small amount of CO2. "...the EIB does not intend to recommend funding any projects whose emissions are greater than 550gCO2 / kWh, which in practice excludes all coal projects. [An EIB representative] added that the emission limit can only be made more stringent. ..."   C...