Coal is the foundation of the Polish power sector, yet it also makes the country one of the world's largest emitters of carbon dioxide. But this is bound to change because Poland is determined to outpace other European Union nations in applying what is known as clean coal technology.

A series of conferences held in the southern cities of Cracow and Katowice in mid-March proved that environment-friendly technology is largely a question of money.

The conferences, collectively entitled Geological Aspects of Underground Carbon Storage and Processing, were held at the University of Science and Technology (AGH) and the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, and at the University of Silesia in Katowice. The initiative came from Prof. Jerzy Buzek (pictured), former prime minister of Poland and now a member of the European Parliament, aided by Dr. Andrzej Siemaszko, director of Poland's National Contact Point for Research Programs of the European Union. The conferences were held under the auspices of the Polish ministries of the economy and the environment.

In March last year, EU leaders agreed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Europe by at least 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990. They also decided to make sure that energy from renewable sources accounts for no less than 20 percent of the EU's total energy balance in 2020, with biofuels accounting for at least 10 percent of all fuels used in transport.

An EU directive of this January obligates power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and cement plants in all member countries to significantly reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. The directive has ushered in a unified market for emissions trading. As of 2013, all the emission rights of the power and petrochemical industries will be sold at auctions under the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). The quota of emission rights admitted to trading will be reduced each year, so that by 2020 the amount traded is 21 percent lower than in 2005. Income generated in this way-estimated at 50 billion euros in 2020-will be channeled to the national budgets of individual EU member states, with the stipulation that the money must be used to support the development of new environment-friendly technologies and for investment in renewable energy, carbon dioxide capture and storage, and research and development.

Some fear that the carbon dioxide emission quotas will be bought mainly by Western European corporations, with little or nothing left for Polish energy groups. There is also speculation that large corporations will eventually benefit from this system because funds generated from the trading of emission rights, instead of contributing to the EU budget, will return to these corporations to be spent on the development of emission reducing technologies and alternative sources of energy.

In Poland, renewable energy will have to account for at least 15 percent of all energy produced by 2020. This should spur the development of small-scale power facilities, experts say, with local governments focusing on the development of biogas production plants, small biomass gasification and combustion facilities, biofuel production plants, geothermal facilities, energy crops, and wind farms.

What about coal?
Coal will continue to be one of the main energy sources in Poland in the coming decades, experts say. However, if the country wants to avoid paying billions of euros into the EU coffers for carbon dioxide emission quotas, it needs to develop a system to meet the demand for coal-derived energy while eliminating emissions.

Work is under way on a technology for trapping and storing carbon dioxide underground. This mainly applies to carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants. Such a carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would reduce emissions by 80-90 percent, experts say, but the cost of the technology is enormous, especially as the EU does not intend to subsidize it. Estimates show that the technology would increase the price of energy generated by some 60 percent. The European Commission is working to develop a pilot program under which the latest CCS technologies would be installed in 12 European power plants to begin with. Poland wants to host at least one such system. At the same time, officials in Brussels have drafted a directive on the geological storage of carbon dioxide, selection of storage sites, and related monitoring and security procedures.

What CCS means for Poland
The EU directive may mean serious economic problems for Poland. To deal with these problems, the country needs projects such as the Polish Clean Coal Technologies Platform, a new organization that was set up in March. The organization brings together the country's largest power engineering facilities, and in the future it will also include fuel companies. The most urgent need is to modernize power plants across the country to enable them to implement technologies that increase the amount of power generated and reduce emissions. Otherwise Polish power plants will lose the price competition and will have to be shut down, experts say. This will ultimately lead to the closure of mines, thus posing a threat to the country's energy security.

New projects in the power sector need to include coal gasification technologies allowing for the capture of carbon dioxide and its storage underground. Poland should think of building power and chemical facilities that would produce synthetic fuels and carbochemical products, in addition to electricity. Practically all across the country, and especially in its western and central regions, there are porous rocks deep underground that could store huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Their capacity is estimated to be enough to last more than 100 years. A comprehensive program for transporting and storing the gas needs to be developed.

More specialist services are needed to seek out storage sites, test their tightness, monitor them, predict their behavior over hundreds of years, and guarantee their safety for the environment and humans.

In fact, Poland pioneered the CCS technology in the EU by injecting carbon dioxide into a deposit in Borzęcin in the south of the country in 1995. The site has been regularly used for this purpose ever since then.

The good points
Despite their restrictive assumptions, the EU's directives for the power sector offer a major opportunity for Poland to develop new technology and increase its economic competitiveness and energy security. All this can be ensured by clean coal technologies based on coal gasification, either on the surface or underground. Just 30 years ago every larger Polish town had a gasworks that produced gas from coal. Today upgraded gasification technologies will be used to make synthetic fuels for motor vehicles and to obtain hydrogen, the cleanest possible fuel. But even these processes produce huge amounts of carbon dioxide that should best be stored underground.

Jacek Filipek