Energy in Poland - report from Wroclaw
One of the biggest ecological problems in Poland is the environmentally friendly energy production. The exploitation of renewable or alternative energy sources is not popular. The amount of energy produced from such sources is not satisfying, especially when compared to the situation in the whole EU.
In the year 2006 energy produced from renewable sources was 6,4% of the whole energy produced (3,9% when speaking only about electric energy), while in the EU it was 14,6 % (14,3% of electric energy produced). The better news is that usage of energy obtained this way was in Poland 6,8% of the energy used (in the whole EU 4,8%), however there are countries which are much better in exploiting ecological energy – for example Austria had nearly 60%, Latvia and Sweden about 45%.
One important thing is that in Poland there are no nuclear power plants. Our renewable and alternative sources of electric energy are: water (47,6%), solid biomass (42,7), wind (6%), biogas received from rubbish tips or sewage treatment plants (3,7%). We do not produce electric energy using solar power, geothermal energy or urban waste to a bigger scale yet but it becomes more and more popular in many countries of EU (just like nuclear energy).
According to the forecast, especially the wind energy will become more efficiently exploited in the future (when speaking about renewable sources) and we should obtain the result of 14% of total energy produced from renewable energy sources by the year 2020. But it would be also environmentally friendly if Poland started exploiting nuclear energy (which is not classified as renewable energy source but an alternative one).
But the fact is that in Poland, there is still no nuclear power plant. There is a big advantage of using such power plants, giving out almost no pollution, the only wastes are some radioactive substances which can be transported in special, yet ultra-safe containers. Nowadays, nuclear power plants are sheltered against radiation, so that it gives out only neglectable amount – in comparison a women having sex takes more radiation from her partner then the radiation she would take from a modern nuclear power plant behind the wall.
However, in our country there is still fear of nuclear power plants concerning Czarnobyl disaster. And many people still don’t understand how obsolete it was. Happily, in last year we could observe sharp improvement in society thinking about nuclear power. Especially educated and young people (it means those with initiative) support the idea of such power plants. However, we must still encourage the society to agree on funding a nuclear power plant, still more people (45%) are against them and only 42% for.
In our opinion Poland have slept over its chance of cheap, nuclear energy. It’s been long ago that the government was thinking about creating a nuclear power plant in Żarnowiec. Unfortunately then, in 1981, it did not get agreement from neighboring inhabitants. We can see in many other European countries that nuclear power plants are a great solution. For example in France, where most energy comes from nuclear power.
Nowadays, more and more EU countries are building their nuclear power plants. The 4 most reliable NPPs-building companies have a lot of work all over the Europe. The prognosis from prof. Luisem Jestin, technical director of EdF Polska, one of energy companies in Poland, says that we have no chance of owning a nuclear power plant before 2018 and even that is an optimistic prognosis where people agree on the construction and the administration works fast. Which, in Polish reality is not yet known. Polish Economy Minister has said that until 2020 we will have two new nuclear power plants built – which, according to experts from money.pl is unreal, and it cannot be done sooner than till 2030.
And how do the nuclear power plants impact the environment? Let’s compare it to a coal power plant. Whilst it turned out – as Andrzej Strupczewski from International Nuclear Power Agency from Vienna pointed out – that running a coal power plant, developer with all modern safety devices, environmental protection devices, costs about 130 human beings (precocious deaths) for production of one GW yearly. Meanwhile yearly formation of the same amount of energy in a nuclear power plant takes two human beings. (...) Thus, Energy created so far by nuclear power plants saved 1250000 human beings. What is more, as it was revealed, nuclear energy is 10 times cheaper than the one harvested from natural gas and about 100 times cheaper than energy harvested from coal. Investment costs are in fact higher, but fuel price is incomparable lower. Then again we have transportation costs, which is still being most responsible for air pollution. A 100MW nuclear power plant leeds yearly about 30 tons of fuel, while coal power plant of the same power needs 3 · 106 tons of fuel.
