Mott's Blog

The year is ending with the new Polish Government trying to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic which is Polish energy policy. The Law and Justice party seems confused between its election campaign rhetoric and the realities of the situation it now faces. As the deck is vanishing under the encroaching sea, the politicians gather on the fantail making speeches about the ship's seaworthiness. Almost all elements of the proposed path to energy security are fraught with bogus assumptions, bad information and a special kind of Polish naiivity. Shale gas- when there is a major rise in  oil and gas prices worldwide and the government gets out of the way, this might be possible. Until then, it is a dead-end street in Poland. The type of policies it would take to really jump start shale gas here (where it is in deep formations and quite expensive to develop) seem implausible in the context of Polish politics. Now more than ever.....  This day, if it ever comes, also depen...

   Maybe the Polish policy-makers thought that a renewable energy law had to keep being renewed?    More delays have emerged in March as the "legal commission" made its changes and now the local government organizations and the environmental committee weigh in. The biggest external source of pressure for changes is undoubtedly the European Commission, on two fronts - the DG Competition that determines what state aid will not distort competition (which has not been an unintended consequence in Poland but part of the design of the law) and the DG Energy that determines if the law meets the transposition requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive.    The delays seem to be inevitable, since major interests were locked out of the deliberations and the successive drafts were all prepared in secret and largely ignored the consultation period inputs. Several political miscalculations have also been in play, i.e. the ruling coalition assuming hat green ene...