Society Watch: Poland tries to learn lesson from the past as it seeks to power past coal

Reuters

3 days ago

June 9 - Steep paths zigzag through the pine and silver birch trees that smother the slopes of a vast slag heap looming over Murcki, a suburb of Katowice. For over 100 years it was the dumping ground for the spoil from the Boze Dary mine, until it closed in 2015.
Standing at the top of the heap, with the green forests of Silesia stretching out to the horizon, it is difficult to imagine that there were once around 70 coal mines across the country, employing 400,000 miners.
Then in the 1990s, as Poland moved from a Communist to a free-market economy, state support for coal abruptly ended, and dozens of uneconomic mines closed, often overnight, leaving thousands of miners without work or support, explains Sebastian Pypwacz, from the local environmental NGO BoMiasto.
'In the 1990s the premise was very simple – we close the coalmines… (we) give money to the people,' says Pypwacz. While they were told to use the money to start their own businesses, there was no practical advice about how to do it.
Today the country's remaining 19 pits, which produce around 60 million tonnes of thermal coal a year, face a similar fate, as Poland implements targets to wean itself off coal.
Pypwacz fears that lessons from that last wave of closures haven't been learned, even though many communities are still visibly struggling with the consequences of those redundancies from the 1990s.
In Katowice, the state capital of Silesia, Momika Bajka has been helping to rebuild some of the lives shattered by those first closures. In 1994, shocked at the number of homeless children living around the town's train station, she founded the House of Guardian Angels. It offered support and shelter to these children, many of whom were on the streets after the breakdown of family life.
The centre is in the town's Zalenze neighbourhood, on the edge of a former worker's estate,. Bajka recalls that with jobs scarce in post-Communist Poland 'lots of men were sitting around not going to work or doing anything'. There were tensions between husbands and wives, she says, as women went out to find jobs to support their families, something the men found difficult to accept.
Bajka agrees that it was wrong to just hand out large sums of money, as few people knew how to invest it. Under communism, rent and bills were often paid by the mines, so their workers weren't used to responsibilities. And miners didn't just lose their jobs, but their friends, their community, their sports clubs and the whole structure to their lives.
The money soon ran out, spent on cars and holidays, alcohol became a big problem, then depression and a tragic spike in suicides.
Bajka sees the legacy living on today, with the children of the young people she originally helped now attending homework clubs and after-school activities at the centre, because they have inherited the problems of their parents. Many are socially excluded, she says, and 'lack the opportunities that others had'.
With the next round of mining closures, the process needs to be properly managed. 'The best way is to prepare before the coalmines close,' she says, building relationships and 'listening to people to find what they are afraid of'.
Iwona Bojadzhijewa, a project manager in the Just Transition Advisory Hub at the Warsaw-based Instrat Foundation think-tank, believes one of the biggest barriers to a just transition this time is the insistence on sticking to a 2049 deadline to close all the remaining mines, part of a social contract signed by the last government, coal companies and trade unions.
In 2024, coal produced 57% of Poland's energy, and nearly 150 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, but much of this coal is now imported from places such as Kazakhstan and Indonesia, not mined in Poland. Instrat's research suggests the majority of Poland's surviving coal mines will close over the next decade, with coal production predicted to drop to around 23 million tonnes in 2030.
No one will benefit from prolonging coal's demise. 'The schedule needs to be amended,' says Bojadzhijewa, 'they all know it's going to happen earlier… it's not honest.' EU climate targets and market pressures are also likely to accelerate this timeline.
The problem is that Poland lacks a coherent energy strategy, she says. Regional and national government, as well as the EU, all have an interest in energy production, especially as Poland is the largest beneficiary of the EU's Just Transition fund, with Silesia alone set to receive over 2 billion euros, much of it earmarked for job creation.
Earlier this month, the right-wing populist Karol Nawrocki won the Polish presidency, having run a campaign that was both critical of climate policy and defended coal's role in Poland's energy mix.
However, with more political power vested in parliament, Bojadzhijewa doesn't believe Nawrocki's election will make any substantial changes to Poland's decarbonisation strategy. However, she adds. the comments will still prove unsettling for those living in mining communities.
'These statements seem particularly unfair towards the inhabitants of coal-dependent regions, as they can fuel false hopes that the transition will be postponed indefinitely,' she says. 'Rather than engaging constructively in building a sustainable future beyond coal, there is a risk that people may cling to unrealistic promises that could undermine long-term progress.'
BoMiasto has developed a Just Transition Barometer to research public sentiment around mine closures. It reveals that while people are deeply aware that closures will impact the majority of local residents, what they care about most is securing stable energy prices, clean air and access to well-paid, future-oriented jobs.
Patryk Bilas, a local independent councillor, agrees that Poland needs a 'concrete, step-by-step, long-term plan' for the transition from coal, and to be able to communicate this to affected communities.
Bilas is a director of the Innovation and Competence Centre at Katowice's Euro-Centrum Science and Technology Park, which supports energy-efficient technologies and clean industry. While the closure of old coal-fired plants over the next decade will cut Poland's electricity capacity by a third, an 'explosion of small-scale photovoltaics, wind turbines and so on' will replace coal, he says.
Bilas believes miners have many transferable skills that are suited to new green technologies, such as solar installation, heat pumps and wind turbines. Around 194,000 people are currently employed in the renewable sector, he says, with predictions this could rise to 300,000 by 2030.
Some local businesses are already shifting. Katowice-based manufacturer Formar, for instance, is now building new green technologies alongside mining machinery, much of which is destined for China. The company has also launched a training programme for miners looking to work on wind turbines, and has developed a transition strategy that involves buying up and investing in new clean energy companies.
'Setting out a timeline (for closing the mines) can help the miners,' says Pypwacz . 'We want to communicate with miners that 'your skills are viable in another industry'.'
A growing interest in post-industrial tourism is also creating new jobs. The Silesian Museum opened in Katowice's former colliery 10 years ago, while the Museum of Coal Mining is housed inside the former Guido mine in nearby Zabrze, a town which once had eight mines, as well as various smelting and coking plants. Elsewhere, the vast blast furnace at Ruda Slaska, which hasn't been active for 20 years, is set to be turned into an exhibition hall, with interactive displays about the region's industrial heritage.
Creative thinking has also helped some of the town's that felt the brunt of those initial closures to find a new life. In sharp contrast to the apartments in Zelenze, Kolonia Zgorzelec, an historic worker's estate in the town of Bytom, has been revitalised over the last decade, with the support of a local development company.
Pyplacz also points to Nikiszoweic, five kilometres from Katowice, another architecturally important cluster of former miners' tenement blocks.
The neat blocks of brick apartments, with their shops and school, became a violent no-go area after the mine closed, but today the flats are occupied by young families, and the estate transformed into a tourist attraction, with a museum, art gallery and high-end restaurants.
Nearby, the sheds and warehouses of the old Wieczorek mine, many with elaborate brick facades, are set to be turned into the Katowice Gaming and Technology Hub, a new centre for business startups, where the next wave of redundant miners may be able to put their redundancy cheques to good use.
'Change is inevitable,' says Bojadzhijewa '(but) we need to make sure that it doesn't happen at the cost of the people.'