Poland’s special-offer coal

BLACK FRIDAY bargains spread to Poland this year with the publicly-owned Polish Mining Group (PGG) slashing €46 off every ton ordered online.

Poland is the most coal-dependent country in Europe, using nationally-mined fossil fuel to generate 70 per cent of its electricity and to heat approximately one-third of its homes.

It also produces more hard, compact and carbon-rich anthracite than any other European Union country and the PGG saw coal prices climb after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Prices would again ordinarily increase as the cold weather sets in, but this year they have fallen instead, and prompted the PGG’s Black Friday incentive.

Last year Polish households began to build up supplies of coal, prepared to pay higher prices to avoid shortages during the energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion.  Instead, 2022’s winter was unexpectedly mild, leaving dealers with unsold stocks.

“The market is now saturated and at most the PGG is probably selling about a third of its production,” a supplier from Silesia, Poland’s principal coal-producing region, told the Portal Samorządowy news service.

By the end of June this year, Poland had coal stocks of 3.3 million tons, more than doubling the 1.5 million tons in hand during the same period in 2022, according to figures from the country’s Industrial Development Agency (ARP).

Despite the country’s reliance on coal, the Polish government as well as local authorities are encouraging households to increase energy efficiency in their homes, improve insulation and phase out polluting heating systems using coal.

In response, Poland is now the European Union’s fastest-growing market for clean, green, non-polluting heat pumps which it is also beginning to manufacture.