With coal costs rising and the rest of Europe working towards carbon neutrality, the pressure is on for the Polish Government to take measures to promote renewable energy. According to leading data and analytics company GlobalData, Poland’s incentive measures – such as the ‘My Electricity’ program – have already triggered massive improvement and are setting the country in good stead to see around 14.5GW of solar PV installations by the end of 2030. This will result in solar contributing more than 20% in the country’s capacity mix.

Mohit Prasad, Project Manager at GlobalData, comments: “Poland’s reported cumulative solar PV installations – 3.9GW as of 1 Jan 2021 – represents a massive threefold jump from a year ago. Furthermore, its solar PV capacity has surged in the past two years since the introduction of the government’s subsidy program ‘My Electricity’ in 2019.

“Poland has long witnessed political support for coal-fired plants, which is apparent in that – prior to the introduction of the My Electricity program – the country’s cumulative solar PV installations totalled 562MW (1.2% of the capacity mix) while coal-fired capacity was 31.7GW* (around 70% of the capacity mix). With so many households availing subsidies through the program and installing solar panel on their rooftops, the country has witnessed a significant change in its power mix. For example, the contribution of solar PV to the capacity mix has increased to 8.1% at the end of 2020.”

Poland has witnessed two consecutive years of dry weather (2018 and 2019), followed by a warm winter in 2019/2020 and a very dry spring in 2020. This resulted in a severe drought, which is bad news for a country that produces most of its electricity through coal-fired plants, some of which use river water for cooling. The My Electricity program was the government’s answer to shift focus towards alternative sources of energy. The subsidy covers up to 50% of the installation costs of building solar PV plants ranging from 2kW to 10kW and up to PLN5,000.

* at the end of 2018