Adriana Sas
Research expert covering the Polish market
Renewable energy in Poland - statistics & facts
The transformation of Poland's energy sector, shifting from coal power toward renewable energy sources (RES), is inevitable. Poland has pledged to reduce CO2 emissions, causing radical changes to the energy mix in a country where coal-based energy production has dominated. According to the draft "Energy Policy of Poland until 2040", from 2021, coal will be the source of 56 percent of electricity in 2030 and 28 percent in 2040. The share of RES will be 32 percent in 2030 and 40 percent in 2040, respectively.
A total of 37.7 TWh was generated from RES in 2022. Wind sources played a key role, with 12.6 percent of RES power generation coming from windmills, followed by photovoltaics. Biomass-burning sources and hydroelectric power plants generated significantly smaller amounts of energy.
However, Poland is not one of the countries with high solar insolation, which makes solar panels record a relatively low utilization rate of installed capacity. In this respect, wind power is ahead. In December 2023, wind farms accounted for 14.2 percent of the total installed capacity. The Polish power system had 9.4 GW of wind turbine capacity in this period, and the largest wind farm was FW Potęgowo, with an installed capacity of 219 MW.
Decarbonization - power generation increasingly green
Phasing out coal in the power industry entails a rapid energy transition for Poland. The share of coal in Poland's electricity generation in 2023 has fallen to 63 percent, and the share of renewables has risen to 27 percent. While the share of gas remains the same as in 2020, coal and renewables have shown the fastest changes ever. For comparison - in 2023, coal accounted for nearly three-quarters of Poland's energy mix in power generation. Until 2018, the share remained above 80 percent. The year 2022 saw the beginning of much larger increments in RES generation than in previous years. The annual rate of growth of renewable energy generation in 2021 - 2022 was 7.2 TWh, three times higher than in the preceding period, and accounted for 20 percent of the electricity generated in 2022.A total of 37.7 TWh was generated from RES in 2022. Wind sources played a key role, with 12.6 percent of RES power generation coming from windmills, followed by photovoltaics. Biomass-burning sources and hydroelectric power plants generated significantly smaller amounts of energy.
Photovoltaics, the most rapidly growing RES source
Photovoltaics (PV) added nearly five GW of new capacity in 2023. The installed capacity of photovoltaic panels rose from 12.2 GW to 17 GW, an increase of 40 percent year-on-year. Consumer installation of PV is also high. The number of PV micro-installations has increased, and their estimated capacity was more than 9.3 GW at the end of the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 1,241 percent in three years. Prosumers in Poland still have the largest share of the PV market. In 2022, they accounted for 68 percent of the annual increase in installed PV capacity.However, Poland is not one of the countries with high solar insolation, which makes solar panels record a relatively low utilization rate of installed capacity. In this respect, wind power is ahead. In December 2023, wind farms accounted for 14.2 percent of the total installed capacity. The Polish power system had 9.4 GW of wind turbine capacity in this period, and the largest wind farm was FW Potęgowo, with an installed capacity of 219 MW.
