In the transition to green energy and striving to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, Poland is currently facing uneven progress and political obstacles. Although the country has managed to significantly reduce the proportion of coal in electricity production – from over 80% in 2018 to 52.8% in 2025 – it remains the only European Union member state that produces more than half of its electricity from this fossil resource.
Political environment and strategy
The government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised to accelerate the energy transition, but decision-making has been slow. The process is also hampered by the right-wing President Karol Nawrocki, who actively uses his veto powers and opposes Europe's now-stalling “Green Deal”.
Poland is the last of the European Union countries to have adopted an updated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP). It aims to increase the share of renewable energy in electricity production to approximately 65-69% by 2040. However, Poland still does not have an official date for the complete phase-out of coal mining.
Energy, economy and various complications
In recent years, the country has experienced a rapid solar panel boom. This creates an oversupply of electricity in the summer, but insufficient wind energy capacity in the winter forces the country to rely increasingly on coal. In the summer of 2026, Poland also began producing offshore wind energy for the first time in its history.
Poland maintains a strong position as one of the most important hubs for lithium-ion battery production in Europe and one of the world's leading exporters of these batteries.
There is political consensus in the country regarding the development of nuclear energy. The construction of the first nuclear power plant on the Baltic Sea coast in cooperation with the US company Westinghouse is planned to begin in 2028, with its opening expected no earlier than 2036.
Closing coal mines and reducing the number of employees – a 10% drop in mining employment is forecast for 2026 alone – is creating strong social tension. For the country's regions, such as Bełchatów, where Europe’s largest lignite power station is located, the end of the coal era will be a massive economic shock; people are, of course, worried about the negative changes in their lives that lie ahead.
Polish cities still have some of the worst air quality indicators in Europe, with smog causing around 40,000 premature deaths each year. Coal is still used on a massive scale for household heating, and the government-subsidised furnace replacement programme has encountered management problems and fraud. Transport is the only sector in which greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 1990.
Poland’s nuclear programme – Polish hope
Poland’s goal is to build two conventional nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 6-9 gigawatts. The country is currently seeing a rare political consensus in favour of nuclear energy, but the implementation of the project is facing delays.
The first station project is in an advanced stage of planning. It will be built on the Baltic Sea coast in cooperation with the US technology giant Westinghouse. Construction is planned to begin in 2028. Initially, the opening was promised for 2033; currently, 2036 is being cited as the most realistic deadline. In parallel to the large stations, the Polish state oil company Orlen plans to build two small-scale reactor units by 2035. Heavy industry, looking for ways to reduce its carbon footprint, is also showing interest in these reactors. Interestingly, the idea of potentially building a small reactor sometimes appears here in Latvia as well, although such a possibility is not being considered seriously. Even though, at the very least, it would be an excellent solution for the Baltics.
Poland’s biggest problem – transport
Transport is the most problematic sector in Poland’s climate plan. It is the only industry in the country where the volume of emissions has increased since 1990. For example, accounting for 22.1% of the total volume in 2024. The government has officially concluded that it will be impossible for Poland to reach the European-set target of ensuring a 29% share of renewable energy in transport by 2030. Instead, only 17.7% is forecast to be achieved.
Despite government subsidies that have accelerated new car registrations, Poland still has the lowest share of electric vehicles in the entire EU. By mid-2026, there were just under 292,500 electrified cars on the roads, of which electric vehicles made up only half (~142,000). The country has only just over 13,200 charging points.
Poland is an EU leader in road freight logistics. If the sector fails to quickly transition to zero-emission heavy goods vehicles, Polish carriers risk being pushed out of the European market. The CPK project – Central Communication Port – is mentioned as a positive exception, under which a high-speed railway is planned to be built. The first trains could start running in the early 2030s.
How is the fulfilment of renewable energy targets going?
Poland’s transition to green electricity is dynamic, but unstable and unbalanced. A situation has developed in the country where solar panel capacity – approximately 27.6 GW – significantly exceeds wind energy capacity. On sunny summer days, an oversupply of electricity builds up in the network, whereas in winter, when there is little sun and onshore wind farm development is still delayed due to historical legal restrictions, Poles are forced to burn coal.
The total share of renewable energy in electricity has reached ~31.2%. The new climate plan sets a target of achieving 65.6-68.9% of electricity generation from RES by 2040, while the coal share must drop to less than 5%.
Problems with the construction of onshore wind farms
The development of onshore wind energy in Poland came to a sudden halt in 2016, when the then-conservative government adopted the so-called 10H distance law or Ustawa odległościowa, which was introduced to fulfil election promises to rural voters who opposed wind turbines near their homes. The “10H distance law” stipulates that new wind turbines can only be built at a distance from any residential building or nature reserve that is at least 10 times greater than the total height of the turbine, including the raised blade. Given that the height of modern turbines reaches about 150-200 metres, the minimum distance to the nearest house must be 1.5-2 kilometres.
This condition proved too strict and effectively blocked 98-99% of Poland's entire territory from new wind farm investments. The industry stagnated for seven years, many projects were abandoned, and this created the large gap with solar energy that persists to this day. The law was only liberalised in 2023, reducing the minimum distance to 700 metres, provided the local municipality agrees; this unblocked a portion of the investments that can be put into the construction of wind farms.
Westinghouse place in Poland's nuclear project
At the end of 2022, Poland chose the US company Westinghouse Electric Company as its main technological partner for the construction of its first nuclear power plant. The geopolitical situation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted Poland to seek a close and strategic security partnership specifically with the US, leaving the offers from France and South Korea on the sidelines. Westinghouse, which provides the reactor technology itself, is working in a consortium with another US engineering and construction giant, Bechtel and the Polish state company Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe. The station will be equipped with three modern AP1000® pressurised water reactors. This is a proven US technology that is already operating in the US and China. This is a megaproject with a total cost estimated at about 51 billion US dollars (~192 billion zlotys). US companies are currently carrying out extensive design work, in-depth geotechnical surveys at the construction site in the Lubiatowo-Kopalino region of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, and are preparing documentation for obtaining construction permits and licences.
Although the US side is providing the engineering and technological “burden”, the Polish government and companies are still finalising the last legal steps. The final approval from the European Commission for the massive state financial support for this project is also awaited.
The phenomenon of public support
Public opinion in Poland is currently a unique phenomenon. While the transition to nuclear energy causes sharp debates and public protests in many European countries, Polish society is currently one of the most positively disposed towards nuclear energy in the European Union. The latest and historical data reveal a very convincing dynamic. According to data from a national survey commissioned by the Polish Ministry of Energy, support for the construction of nuclear power plants in the country reaches a truly fantastic 92% threshold. Only ~5% of the population express direct rejection. Polish researchers point out that this issue is one of the rare ones where there is public consensus – nuclear energy is supported by both progressively minded citizens worried about the climate and conservative-minded voters.
Usually, the so-called NIMBY principle operates in the construction of large infrastructure objects – Not In My Back Yard. In Poland, this trend is surprisingly weak – almost 80% of those surveyed would be prepared to accept the construction of a nuclear power plant in the vicinity of their place of residence. In local municipalities where construction is planned, residents see significant benefits – both new jobs, the improvement of infrastructure and roads, as well as an increase in local tax revenue and investments in local development.
The Polish attitude towards the atom has not always been this positive. After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and right up until the Fukushima accident in 2011, the majority of the public treated this idea with rejection or caution. A dramatic breakthrough occurred in 2022 with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis in Europe. The motivation of Polish society is based on two main factors, namely, 94% of the population believe that nuclear energy will protect the country from energy dependence and strengthen national security. The second factor is financial stability, as the public associates nuclear energy with stable and predictable electricity prices in the future, compared to expensive coal and volatile gas prices. Approximately 88% of Poles understand that it is an effective tool for fighting climate change and smog.
Experts, however, note that this credit of trust is enormous and will be tested in practice when construction work begins, the real costs of the project increase and the question of choosing a location for a nuclear waste repository becomes topical. We can wish the Poles success in the implementation of this project and hope that in the future the Baltics will also agree on the construction of a nuclear power plant and be able to do so successfully.
Sources: Polish, German and US information websites