Mott's Blog

The Polish coal sector uses an astounding 70% of all of the water annually used in Poland, according to a new report.   Massive amounts of water are used for cooling at coal-fired energy plants. So when there is a period of low water levels in our rivers and lakes, as we have experienced for the last two summers, there is a huge risk of power outages. Polish electricity is "down" about ten times more each year than Germany (where Polish politicians love to assert that the system is unreliable). The level of water consumption by energy in Poland is five times the average level in Europe and ten times the global number. Id . This is a very unsustainable situation: "Water absorption coal-based energy is one of its biggest drawbacks. In terms of the abundance of water, we are in the European Union on the fifth place from the end, before the Czech Republic, Denmark, Cyprus and Malta. Moreover, Poland has one of the lowest of renewable water resources in the world per ...

This is heresy in the utility business and they are supposed to keep exaggerating the adverse effects of renewable energy on the grid. But Boris Schucht, CEO of 50Hertz Transmission GmbH since 2010, is remarkably candid in his interview this week: " There are a certain number of myths in the energy industry. One of them is that we need more flexibility in the system to integrate renewables, like energy storage, interruptible loads or backup power plants. That’s a myth. We have a lot more flexibility than we need and a huge amount of potential." He advocates some changes but is not repeating the doomsday scenarios echoed by Eurolectric's lobbyists. On days of excess energy, he says Germany can just export to Poland. If Poland is below the renewable energy target in 2020, it will have no choice but to take German wind electricity, even if that means replacing Polish coal plant electricity output. The decision for Poland is not whether we have renewable energy or not, ...