Poland eyes N-station to keep coal plants humming

Bloomberg

Poland hopes a nuclear power station may allow it to continue using the European Union’s biggest coal deposits to fuel the bloc’s biggest eastern economy.
The country, which gets more than 80 percent of its electricity from coal, may use a pledge to build its first nuclear power plant as a bargaining chip in key talks with the EU on planned climate regulations under the so-called winter package. The clean energy source would cut overall emissions and could help Poland persuade the bloc to let it use dirty coal units for longer.
“It would be best if there was no winter package, but if it’s there we want to work out a compromise,” Deputy Energy Minister Grzegorz Tobiszowski told reporters in Warsaw on Tuesday. “In its current form the proposals would limit our coal investments and we wouldn’t be able to afford it.”
Poland, the biggest net receiver of EU funds, has touted coal as the cheapest fuel and repeatedly said reducing its use too quickly would hit economic growth. That is in contrast to a long-term shift to renewables, or Energiewende, that has forced plants using the fuel to close in neighboring Germany. Under the proposed EU regulations, Poland wouldn’t be able to support construction of back-up coal plants in its power capacity market, effectively spelling the end of new facilities burning the fuel. A nuclear plant, which could cost $6.2 billion, may be part of Poland’s talks with the EU on climate policy, Tobiszowski said.
“We cannot not take notice of what the EU is preparing for us” and need our own proposal, he said. “If we only come up with hard coal and lignite, the EU would destroy us. I want to be pragmatic and efficient.” The key decisions in talks with the bloc will be made next year, according to Piotr Naimski, the deputy minister in charge of key energy infrastructure. A decision on the nuclear plant should be made by end-June, once the Energy Ministry finds a viable financing option.
While the nuclear power project is one of the few areas in which the Law & Justice government is following its predecessors, the project has yet to reach the drawing board.