Mott's Blog

The biggest development in the renewable energy prospective market in Poland is the new amendment in the Sejm, which has passed the committee and appears to be sailing for rapid rubber-stamping by the rest of the government in Warsaw. The single biggest characteristic of the law is the emergence of separate technology "baskets" for renewable energy auctions. The Polish Government figured out that it can control the mix of technologies by setting the size of the baskets as well as the reference prices (maximum allowed support in the form of a contract for the difference). Regardless of any other developments, it appears that this procedure will be used to skew the support away from PV and wind to biogas and biomass. The characteristic being used to "make the cut" is the stability and reliability of the renewable energy source. The intermittent nature of PV and wind have led the Polish Government to put them into a less desirable category in baskets which can be l...

The Polish law on renewable energy has been a moving target for years. Originally, the law was deliberately delayed to allow the state-owned energy companies to keep receiving support which the European Commission would have stopped if the new law had been notified under the treaty. Now the delays are being triggered by the new government's efforts to amend the program on the fly. The government has convinced itself that what RES capacity is already done and more co-firing will be all that we need. Some additional biogas plant construction (actually a lot in real terms) is strongly supported in their mix. But the classic RES technologies are on their black list. They have been completely persuaded by the coal lobby that these technologies are too unreliable to be major parts of the energy mix. The factual basis for their assumptions is being broadly challenged by the RES sector. Poland will not meet the 2020 target without a serious program that includes the full mix of RES ...

The new government in Poland has announced its intention to much more actively promote and support biogas development. We are excited by this change in attitude and are trying to provide them with accurate information and policy suggestions to make it happen. The details have been provided today by the Polish Biogas Association. We basically argue against using auctions for biogas and other smaller RES projects (citing a lot of studies and data). PBA also asks that the current system be fixed by providing a weighted certificate value based on the cost of production of the various technologies (as will be required by the European Commission in their review of the certificate program). We think that program should be continued for several years, even to 2020, to assure that there is a continuous construction of new facilities of all types.  The new auctions will not occur this year at this point and if they go ahead next year with two to four years to wait before new projects tha...

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...

POLISH BIOGAS ASSOCIATION COMMENTS ON SUGGESTED REFERENCE PRICES September 2015      The proposed reference prices released by the Ministry of Economy for the first auctions under the new law significantly understate the support necessary for anaerobic digestion plants. The numbers proposed are as follows: 1) agricultural biogas plants with a capacity of 1 MW - 450 zł / MWh 2) agricultural biogas plants with a capacity exceeding 1 MW - 435 zł / MWh 3) biogas plants using biogas from landfills - 210 zł / MWh 4) biogas plants using biogas from wastewater treatment plants - 400 zł / MWh 5) biogas plants using biogas other than in paragraphs 3 and 4 - 340 zł / MWh Analysis      There is no data from any source that we are aware of to support the price set in the proposal for agricultural biogas under items 1 and 2. Basic biogas costs for agricultural plants of various sizes were set out by the European Biogas Association in 2...

There are rumors in Warsaw that the Polish Treasury Ministry thinks that the small auction for renewable energy support (below 1 MW) will be waste of time and resources. Because 25% of all of the support provided from 2016 and beyond must go to small sources, and small sources will not be sufficient to meet the target, anyone who bids in an auction within the maximum price will win. At the same time, the cost of setting up the auction is pretty much the same whether 250 kW a project are being bid or 150 MW. The Ministry of Economy conceded in the Parliamentary debate on the RES bill that there will be more support offered small sources than there will be projects. This means that there will really be no competition for support and no real pressure on the prices sought. All bids will win.... causing us to ask earlier why have an auction at all? Apparently the Treasury thinks the same thing. The European Commission must accept the "GBER notification" from the Polish Governm...

Cavalry Charge Saves the Day! Once Poland enacts the new renewable energy law, unless it is changed, there should be a challenge in Brussels to compel the Polish Government to make necessary changes due to the state aid rules. Some of the arguments can be: 1.  The treatment of prosumers ( only 80% of the grid price for electricity sold) is discriminatory and arbitrary. It is anti-competitive and distorts the market in favor of large producers; 2. Forcing projects under 1 MW to go to an auction is unfair, anti-competitive and will promote market concentration by reducing or eliminating small RES facilities;                                                                                                         3. The...

   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...