In the last years we have successfully influenced the public debate and decision-making in Poland.
Check out what we were up to!
We support local partners in Eastern Wielkopolska – local governments, trade unions, NGOs – in developing a comprehensive decarbonization strategy, pursuing an active climate policy and obtaining financing. We had a hand in the region and the ZE PAK company joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance as the first participants from Poland. We also initiated the regional government’s pioneering target of achieving climate neutrality by 2040.
As a result of an open letter from the Instrat Foundation and a campaign to open up access to statistical data, government institutions (the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Energy Market Agency) made key energy market data available for free. The letter was signed by nearly 70 stakeholders, and the first energy, climate and mining data platform in Poland – energy.instrat.pl – was created based on the released data.
We proposed imposing a tax on digital giants based on their revenues earned in Poland – an initiative that is gaining increasing support from policymakers. We prepared an expert report proposing the shape of the levy and advising on its implementation into the national legal order. The increased debate on the subject has led the Polish government to lean towards supporting income tax reform at the international level.
A series of reports based on modeling of the country’s electricity system has helped raise ambitions for Poland’s renewables development plans and a broader understanding of their role in moving away from coal. We indicate that it is possible to achieve a share of more than 70% of RES in the mix by 2030. The government and the national power grid operator have raised their ambitions for RES development and have written the goal of 50% RES in the electricity mix in 2030-2032 into their strategies. Our calculations on the possibility of unlocking 7.1% of the country’s land area for wind energy development as a result of the unlocking of the 10H rule are widely quoted by industry organizations and the media, and have found their way into the demands of political parties.
We have shown that the climate ambitions of Polish publicly listed companies are insufficient compared to more developed capital markets. With the launch of esg.instrat.pl – the first public database of climate goals and strategies of the largest players – we verified that by the end of 2021, only 13 of the 140 issuers listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange main indices (WIG20, mWIG40, sWIG80) had adopted climate goals. By aggregating and verifying the data and strategies adopted by companies, we are raising the bar in setting climate targets and ensuring their actual implementation.
As a result of Instrat’s analysis of the profitability of investment in the new Ostrołęka C coal-fired power plant, the investors (Energa and Enea) withdrew from the investment in February 2020. We estimated that the investors may have lost more than PLN 6 billion, compared to more than 1.5 billion PLN cost of the abandoned investment about a year after it began. The legitimacy of the investment is still being investigated by the Supreme Audit Office, and the investors are continuing the project as a gas-fired power plant.
Head of Communications & External Relations