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Poland: Renewable energy to clean the air

2024-02-20 13:00:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Poland: Renewable energy to clean the air

The mayor of Ladek-Zdroj, Roman Kaczmarczyk

When Roman Kaczmarczyk became the mayor of the city of Ladek Zdroj in 2014, he had the idea to fill a field outside the city with wheat instead of planting it with solar panels. People remembered that he was crazy.

At a time when renewable energy was still an unknown sector for most of the country, Kaczmarczyk took it upon himself to turn the small town of thermal baths, located near the border with the Czech Republic, into the first Polish town where the community produces the very energy it needs. He said this would kill two birds with one stone: Clean up the city's highly polluted air and reduce high energy costs.

Kaczmarczyk, an economist and computer engineer by profession, has spent his entire life among the 5,500 inhabitants of Ladek Zdroj. Day after day during the cold seasons, he and the other residents of the city breathe sulfur-polluted air.

The mayor of Ladek-Zdroj, Roman Kaczmarczyk

Like many other cities in Poland, Ladek Zdroji still has a heating system that burns coal, wood and even garbage. Every year the light painted houses are covered with a gray film of smog that gets darker and darker.

Cleaner air

Smog turned into horror for the city's image associated with thermal baths, its most profitable sector. Tourists complained a lot about the city's polluted air. Today, Ladek-Zdroj boasts a photovoltaic solar farm, which has 20 rows of solar panels spread over an 11-hectare (27-acre) field.

Kaczmarczyk says the project has been very successful both at home and abroad: The city now has cleaner air, has low-cost electricity generation and is on the way to becoming independent from the national electricity grid.

Genuine local initiative

The energy cooperative in Ladek-Zdroj — one of Poland's 22 energy communities, started power production in September 2023. The three founders of the cooperative were the three largest municipal enterprises of the city. Cooperative members receive carbon-free electricity directly from the solar farm, paying one-third of the unit price as well as the grid usage fee.

Park with photovoltaic solar panels in Ladek-Zdroj

This year (2024) the cooperative will accept new members coming from the city and nine neighboring villages. Companies and households can buy shares at 227 euros ($243) a share, and to be admitted to the cooperative they must pay an amount of money equal to the value of one share. What is most important is that all municipal buildings in Ladek-Zdroj now receive locally produced ecological energy.

Despite the great benefits that come from this initiative, the mayor still has difficulty convincing some citizens of the city of Ladek-Zdroj, who would rather have roads and other infrastructures instead of solar panels. good ones. "There is a kind of lack of confidence in the cooperative," he says.

Legislation on energy communities is missing

When Kaczmarczyk began to deal with this project, he saw that the Polish government was not prepared for such a unique thing. Cooperatives were under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and as such could only be established in rural areas.

The mayor of Ladek-Zdroj was lucky, says Krzysztof Smolnicki of Fundacja Ekorozwoju, an environmentalist foundation in Wroclaw. "There is no legislation for self-organized energy collectives and for those who produce and consume energy themselves with renewable methods in Poland," he told Deutsche Welle.

Although solar panels are booming in Poland, it is still impossible to set up renewable energy farms and cooperatives in the city. "The creation of large cooperatives should be encouraged not only in rural areas but also on the outskirts of cities, in public buildings such as schools, hospitals and community buildings," says Smolnicki.

Solar panel technology in Ladek-Zdroj

The legal framework is missing

During the previous government's tenure, Poland failed to create the legal framework for renewable energy collectives. Ireneusz Perkowski, a Polish energy farmer and cooperative pioneer criticizes the previous government for not creating a legal framework. "In general, it was thought that the rules for motivation and measurement methods should be drawn up by the municipalities, not by the ministry, since farms and collectives were bottom-up initiatives. But this was never done," Perkowski told "Deutsche Welle"- s.

Great hopes for the new government

After eight years of being ruled by a very conservative Polish government that was skeptical of climate change and renewable energy issues, Kaczmarczyk hopes that he will now at least be able to benefit from the national renewable energy fund.

The new Polish government, more liberal than the previous government, has declared that it will promote the production of energy with ecological methods and that by 2040 it will make the transition from energy produced by coal to energy produced by ecological methods. And in fact, Kaczmarczyk has recently sent the request to a new investment program for energy collectives to expand the city's solar farm tenfold.

EU financing for renewable energy

While nationally funding for those interested in establishing energy cooperatives was scarce, Kaczmarczyk was able to obtain funding for many other city green projects from the European Union, a significant source of renewable energy financing. Poland.

Last year (2023) the European Commission approved around 60 billion euros in grants and loans to support Poland among others to make the country's ecological transition.

The mayor of Ladek-Zdroj, Roman Kaczmarczyk

Some ecological projects in the city

Kaczmarczyk has no doubt that his initiative reduces energy consumption and air pollution. Thanks to grants received from the EU, the city's street lights were fitted with LED bulbs, public buildings were insulated and gas heating, heat pumps and infrared panels replaced 182 coal-burning heating systems.

In 2018, geothermal exploratory drilling began. The city has now returned to the school for energy efficiency, a model project in Poland, and has a smog monitoring system connected to the mayor's smartphone.

Just the beginning

Kaczmarczyk has now become an expert on energy issues and shares his knowledge at forums, expert panels and conferences held all over Poland.

If the residents of Laed-Zdroj no longer vote for him as mayor, he says, he will certainly be upset. But if it does, then he will consider consulting other cities in Poland interested in cleaning the air and producing their own energy. According to Kaczmarczyk, the transformation of Poland has just begun./ DW