Mott's Blog

There are no real surprises in the latest Bankwatch/Friends of the Earth report on Central European Governments use of EU climate change and environmental funds. "... Polish energy policies and strategies continue to follow a path which centres almost entirely on sustaining the existing energy system...."   CLIMATE’S ENFANTS TERRIBLE SHOW NEW MEMBER STATES’ MISGUIDEDUSE OF EU FUNDS IS HOLDING BACK EUROPE’S CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION (January 2016) p. 24. "77% of heat energy comes from burning coal, with other fossil fuels such as gas and oil adding up to cover almost 90% of heat production. The energy system is an oligopoly, with four out of five coal mining companies fully or partially state-owned and the production market mostly shared between four companies where the state is a majority stakeholder. A workforce of 100,000 hard-coal miners, 240 trade unions with significant political power as well as many interconnections between the government and the energy sector ...

Apparently the problem of getting enough cooling water for the coal-fired power plants in Poland is not going away this winter. The likelihood is that residential users as well as industrial ones will be hit with restrictions on energy usage. Low water levels which will now freeze up in January will make it impossible to get enough cooling water to the coal-fired plants. Of course, our neighbors will diversified electricity providers have not reported any problems. They rely on more renewable energy which is not related to the need for massive amounts of cooling water. In fact, the PV solar element is counter-cyclical to low water levels: more sunshine/less water. Every politician in Poland has been too busy pushing the hopeless coal sector here is see the inevitable problems of 90% dependency on one type of electricity production.

Some really bad things will start to happen as the auction in Poland for renewable energy support gets closer. Despite the long discussion over the new law and the guidelines from Brussels (which were relatively rushed through without full consideration of their consequences), there are some real problems looming. First, the auctions to be competitive under EC policy should have at least as many losers as winners. This allegedly allows for competition in the bids for support. The reality is that the small auction (below 1 MW) will have much larger support offered than will be covered by bids. There will be no serious competition and the reference prices will set the limits. That, of course, could be done without an auction and would achieve a much higher rate of quality projects. But the large auction (over 1 MW) is likely to have many more bids than awards. Thus, the EC rule of thumb of 50% losers may occur. That means that 50% of the projects ready to go in Poland will not procee...