In Australia, the court banned the construction of the mine due to climate change. In Poland, apparently we have a different climate

In Australia, weeping and gnashing teeth. According to the Financial Times, the court has banned the construction of a new mine by citing climate change. In Poland, such a ruling seems impossible today. We open the new carbon block ourselves and import black gold into power. Apparently Poles what is happening with the climate, until it's terrible is not.

Until now, Australia was unaffected by the global call for gradual abandonment of coal. At this point, you have to repeat like a mantra, it's not about smog. The effect of burning coal is CO2, which does not create absolutely smog. But the same carbon dioxide has been successfully breaking the protection of our atmosphere for years, which results in more and more climate change.

The position of the Australian government was intransigent. Even after the publication of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operating at the UN. There, he stands in black and white, that if by 2050 the world does not give up coal, the specter of raising the temperature around the globe by 1.5 ° C will be the most real.

Coal is important for Australia and it will not change.

It is a fact that coal mining and energy production from coal play an important role in the energy mix of Australia and it will be so in the future - it left no illusions in response to the UN report by Michael McCormack , Australia's deputy prime minister.

Thus, the exploitation of owned deposits is to be continued as much as possible. Especially that - as the Australian government believes - renewable sources will not be able to fully replace it. At the same time, he announces that he does not intend to break the Paris Agreement . According to the commitments undertaken there, Australia will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2030.

Return of the action: the court banned the construction of the mine.

It was in vain to look for a breach in this Australian strategy. They have coal and will continue to extract it. End of dot. Apparently, there is nothing to crush the copy of even the Great Barrier Reef - one of the natural treasures of Australia, whose climate changes heavily. But even on this monolith a scratch has just been created.

The thing in a judgment issued by a court in New South Wales. In the first instance, the construction of the Rocky Hill mine was banned due to the impact on the nearby city. Gloucester Resources, which belongs to GRL Holdings Pty Ltd - an Australian mining tycoon, appealed against this decision. The court dismissed that appeal. The key argument for Judge Brian Preston was the contribution of the coal mine to climate change.

The coal lobby threatens the entire economy.

In Australia, such a sentence and its arguments are a shock. The environments associated with the fight to end climate change agree that this could be a key precedent. It is not surprising, in turn, that the representatives of the mining industry are of a completely different opinion. They warn that such a sentence may have consequences for the entire Australian economy.

This judgment raises serious concerns as it goes beyond expectations related to regulation. It takes into account an assessment of other factors that, in our opinion, may have consequences that go far beyond the mining industry - says Tania Constable, general director of the Australian industrial group Minerals Council of Australia.

The Australian fear of climate will not reach Poland.

In fact, this judgment may have consequences in Australia. But do others, similarly strongly connected with coal mining too? For example with us? Can you imagine that in Poland the court has banned the construction of a new mine? Personally, I doubt it very much. And I do not mean the statements of Polish politicians, which especially during the UN Climate Summit, recently organized in Katowice, were stunned. I look more closely at the specific actions recently undertaken by the Polish government in this regard.

After all, not so long ago, at the expense of PLN 6 billion, the construction of a 1,000 MW unit at the Ostrołęka Power Plant began. And now the Polish economy is dependent on black gold in about 77 percent. And nothing indicates that it will change in the near future. Besides, the energy minister Krzysztof Tchórzewski does not hide this, who said that our country must "maintain energy based on coal".

And if we run out of coal, we will always import.

Poland has become a permanent coal, stands and will be able to stand as evidenced by the latest data on, for example, the import of this raw material to Poland in 2018 . From the estimated data it is clear that we are dealing with a record. In total, 19.7 million tons of coal were to be delivered to our country from abroad. That's 52 percent. more than a year earlier. The previous record came from 2011, when we imported approx. 11 million tons of coal to the country.

In the past 12 months, we have been buying coal from Russia most - 13.4 million tons. That is 56 percent. more than in 2017. The importing podium also included the United States (1.53 million tonnes) and Australia (1.48 million tonnes). Experts explain this in two ways. First, the decline in coal mining in Polish mines. Here, we scrub the bottom and statistically at least equate to the 50s of the last century. Secondly, the introduced standards regarding the quality of coal in our country were to scare manufacturers, who thus created larger imports.

Poland in one direction, European Commission in the other.

Today, there is no real idea how to overcome the decline in coal mining in Poland. What's worse: there is no hope on the horizon. Of course, the Polish Mining Group itself assumes the extraction in 2030 at the level of 24 million tons of coal. That is about 6-7 million tons per year less than now. At the same time, we do not have a clear strategic change in the energy mix.

The European Commission is making it clear. It wants to accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreements. By 2050, more than 80 percent Electricity is to come only from renewable sources. Meanwhile, Poland stubbornly goes its own way. On the one hand, we do not hide the decline in domestic extraction, and on the other we reserve that we are not going to say goodbye so quickly and on such a scale with coal.

Or maybe we will completely switch to import?

We are slowly beginning to feel that we are moving in a different course from the rest of the EU. EU politicians really want to leave coal. Hence the increase in prices of CO2 emission allowances in the past year - the effect of coal combustion. As a result, the price list of energy services in Poland has grown significantly. The authorities did not want such a nasty surprise to cause Poles in the election year and began to combine with regulations. So that Kowalski would not have to reach deeper into his pocket. At least until the end of the year, as it will be after the spring elections to the European Parliament and autumn to the Polish Sejm and Senate.

But what's next? Listening to the announcement of the head of the energy sector, it is difficult to optimism.

Our research indicates that if we increase the consumption of electricity in Poland only to other energy sources, then we can get a situation that in 2050 the share of coal in the energy mix will be 50%, while the other 50%. they will be other sources of energy - says Krzysztof Tchórzewski .

Perhaps, therefore, we will gradually reduce domestic coal production and increasingly focus on imports. It's just that such a strategy to support the climate fits like a fist to the nose. And it will also not save the painful changes of the entire mining industry.

Maybe in Poland we will see a similar sentence.

During the Economic Forum in Krynica in 2017, Minister Tchórzewski warned that the construction of a coal block in Ostrołęka would be the last investment of this type. But today there is no certainty about these assumptions. Especially, as we hear from the same mouth, that even in 30 years our energy sector will be still dependent on coal in the middle.

Will we come to such a situation as in Australia, where the court has banned the construction of a new mine by citing climate change? Nothing can be ruled out. Our justice system has already had the opportunity to comment on the smog. Perhaps soon he will also speak on climate change.

In Australia, the court banned the construction of the mine due to climate change. In Poland, apparently we have a different climate