Poland’s Coal Problem Has Changed

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Poland’s coal transition is moving much faster than the country’s reputation suggests. Coal supplied 72.5% of Polish electricity in 2021. By 2025 it was down to 52.7%, while renewables reached 31.4%. Coal supplied less than half of generation in five separate months, and in June renewables generated more electricity than coal over a full month for the first time.

There is an important correction to the simple story that renewables are replacing coal one for one. Gas is growing too. In both 2024 and 2025 it recorded the largest increase in generation share, and in 2025 Poland produced 24.4 TWh from gas alongside 23.8 TWh from onshore wind and 20.3 TWh from solar. Poland is decarbonizing quickly, but the replacement mix is renewables plus gas rather than a perfectly clean substitution.

The more interesting problem now is not how quickly coal generation is falling, but why Poland still pays to keep high-emitting coal capacity available. Read the full analysis—and subscribe for more system-level transition work—at TFIE Strategy Briefing.

The distinction is between energy and capacity. Annual generation is measured in MWh or TWh. Reliability asks whether enough dependable MW are available during the hardest hours: high demand, weak wind, no solar, constrained imports or multiple problems at once. A coal plant can therefore run fewer hours every year, lose market share and become less economic as an energy producer while still being considered useful insurance.

Poland’s capacity market makes that tension unusually visible. A September 2025 supplementary auction for the 2026 delivery year contracted 7.58 GW of capacity obligations, and high-emitting plants above 550 kg of CO₂ per MWh were allowed to participate under a special derogation. Similar auctions are planned for 2027 and 2028, with the European exemption expiring at the end of 2028.

That is not necessarily contradictory policy. Renewables are pushing coal down the merit order faster than the rest of the power system can replace all of coal’s reliability functions. The energy transition has moved ahead of the capacity transition.

The resulting system is already showing both sides of the problem. Renewable generation grew enough in 2025 that Poland curtailed 1.4 TWh, twice the 2024 amount, mostly for balancing rather than physical grid congestion. At sunny times Poland can have more low-marginal-cost electricity than its relatively inflexible system can absorb. At other times it still wants coal plants standing by.

Another solar farm does not solve both problems by itself. Poland increasingly needs transmission, interconnection, batteries, flexible demand, district heating, smart EV charging and other ways to shift electricity across time and geography. Its old coal fleet was built to be the electricity system. Replacing it means building a mesh of generation, grids, storage and responsive demand.

The generation buildout itself is no longer hypothetical. Poland’s first offshore wind farm, Baltic Power, delivered electricity to the grid in July 2026. When fully commissioned its 1.2 GW should generate roughly 4 TWh annually, about 3% of present Polish electricity demand.

The near-term direction is becoming difficult to dispute. The IEA expects Polish renewable generation to grow around 13% annually through 2030, overtake coal on an annual basis in 2028 and reach about 53% of generation by 2030. Coal generation is expected to fall roughly 11% a year, while gas continues growing.

So there are now two Polish coal numbers worth watching. The first is coal’s share of annual electricity generation, which is already falling quickly. The second is how much coal capacity Poland still believes it needs during its hardest hours.

The first tells us how far renewables have come. The second will tell us whether grids, storage, flexible loads, interconnection and replacement generation are arriving quickly enough to let coal plants disappear altogether.

Getting coal out of the energy mix comes first. Getting coal out of the power system is the harder second act.

Read the full analysis—and subscribe for more system-level transition work—at TFIE Strategy Briefing.

• Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2026/08/30/poland-coal-capacity-transition/