Coal is practically a religion in Upper Silesia, but an energy transition is likely to come sooner than most miners would like.
Alfredo Bosco (Ronin) is a documentary photographer focusing on social issues and geopolitical crises.
Simone Fant is a freelance journalist. He covers climate, environment and circular economy with in-depth features and investigation for several media outlets.
Cross-posted from the Green European Journal
With his strong hands, magnetic charisma and the look of courage in his eyes, Andrzej Chwiluk is emblematic of the workers who, for 40 years, have descended into narrow tunnels hundreds of metres deep to extract coal. In Poland, Chwiluk is nicknamed “the environmentalist miner”, though this is not necessarily a compliment. Around Katowice, an industrial city located in the coal basin of Upper Silesia, coal is a religion.
Mining has provided employment to hundreds of thousands of Silesians since the Industrial Revolution, thereby ensuring the livelihood of entire generations. But the fossil fuel that made the greatest contribution to the development of the region then became a problem – a dependency that had to be removed without delay. The 24th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) was held in Katowice in 2018; at it, states drew up the first rules to implement the Paris Agreement. But six years later, Silesia appears not to have embarked on a fair and well-planned energy transition.
“I know that coal won’t last in the long term,” said Chwiluk in December 2018, just days before COP24, “but there’s no way we can give it up within the next 20 to 25 years.” But in the years since, the former chairman of the ZZG trade union group at the Makoszowy mine appears to have changed his mind. Chwiluk is one of the very few miners who are fighting to strike a compromise between the European Green Deal, which aims to quickly phase out coal, and the Polish mining industry, which has always objected to climate policies.
“I agree that we should stop using coal as soon as possible, but under two conditions,” he explains. “We must be guaranteed national energy security, and miners must be offered options for reintegration into the labour market so they don’t end up on the streets, which has been the case up to now.”
Dependency on coal
Coal supplies around 45 per cent of Poland’s energy needs, but coal combustion also contributes roughly 150 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere each year. Among European countries, only Germany and Italy emit more. Despite the growth of wind and photovoltaic power in recent years, electricity production is still heavily dependent on coal (60 per cent), which is partly imported from countries such as Colombia, Kazakhstan and Indonesia. Until the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022 prompted Europe to reduce its dependence on Moscow, coal imported to Poland came mainly from Russia.
“Mining it in Poland is not economically competitive,” says Bernard Swoczyna, an analyst at the Warsaw-based Instrat think tank. “It is cheaper to import from non-EU countries where labour costs are lower.” All this could change in 2026, when the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will permanently enter into force, and it will be more expensive to import products with high greenhouse gas emissions.
According to energy expert Marcije Giers of the WiseEuropa Institute, the Polish coal industry survives only thanks to huge state subsidies. “But it won’t be easy to quickly replace coal,” he emphasises when we meet in a café in Warsaw.
Poland is also gambling on nuclear energy in addition to renewable energy, now a booming industry. According to plans drafted by the former Mateusz Morawiecki-led Law and Justice government, the construction of the first nuclear power plant is scheduled to start in 2026 in Choczewo on the Baltic Sea. The plant was initially planned to become operational in 2033, but according to Marzena Czarnecka, Minister of Industry in the new government of Donald Tusk, this is unlikely to happen before 2040.
Meanwhile, the phasing out of coal remains a divisive issue. The date was set for 2049 – a year before the 2050 target for Europe to achieve climate neutrality – via a 2021 agreement between the government and the miners’ union. Some are doubtful this will happen. “The date set by the previous government is unrealistic,” says Patryk Białas, activist and member of Katowice City Council. “Mining and burning coal will cease to be economically viable as early as 2030.”
This is also the view of Urszula Zielińska, co-leader of the Polish Greens and State Secretary at the Ministry of Climate and Environment. Zielińska promised Brussels that Poland would reduce emissions by 90 per cent by 2040 and speed up the phasing out of coal. But the Tusk government’s climate commitments are not yet set in stone. The Polish executive was scheduled to present the updated national energy and climate plan to the European Commission on 30 June. The current plan, which was submitted in 2021 and states the target of 50 per cent of electricity generated from renewable energy by 2030, is considered inadequate by the European Union.
The exception of metallurgical coal
Thermal coal used to generate electricity and heat is not the only type of coal mined in Silesia. Coking coal, a metallurgical coal that is more valuable and harder to replace than thermal coal, is also drawn from deep in the ground. Its continued importance in Europe is demonstrated by the fact that it still features on the list of critical raw materials stipulated by the European Commission in March 2023. “The Silesian coal basin is the only region in Europe with [coking coal] deposits,” explains Janusz Jureczka, President of the Silesian Geological Institute. “We produce approximately 11 million tons annually, which represents one third of the European demand. We will also need it beyond 2049.”
Jerzy Buzek, former member of the European Parliament and Prime Minister of Poland from 1997 to 2001, wholeheartedly endorses this view. “We did it! Coking coal has remained a critical raw material in the European Union,” he wrote on X in March 2023. Buzek highlighted that metallurgical coal is crucial for the energy transition, as it is essential for the production of the steel that is required to build wind turbines.
But not everyone in the Polish mining sector remembers Buzek as a great champion of coal. Over 20 mines were shut down during his government’s “mining restructuring programme” to reduce operating costs and to offset the overproduction of coal. One of these is the Nowa Ruda deposit, a hilly area in Lower Silesia near the border with the Czech Republic. Edward Sledz, a union representative for the local mining company, says it was a political decision. “The government ignored us and closed the mine in 2000, even though we were extracting coal that was essential for heavy industry.”
Miners left to fend for themselves
“The decision-making process to close the mines was comparable to a game of roulette during the Buzek government,” says trade unionist Jerzy Hubka at his office at the 19th-century Makoszówy mine in Zabrze, several kilometres from Katowice. “No assessments of a company’s mineral resources or profitability were carried out. It was a political move.”
160 trade union organisations existed in Poland at the start of the new millennium, often with diverging ideas and interests. The most influential unions opened a special communication channel with local political groups in exchange for electoral support from the miners. According to Hubka, it was this system of patronage that determined the closure or survival of the mines. Makoszówy, the mining company for which he worked for almost 40 years, was also closed in 2016 for political reasons. “Despite being rich in metallurgical coal and having won the award for the safest mine in the country, Prime Minister [of Law and Justice] Beata Szydło decided to ignore our rescue plan,” he said. “Yet during the election campaign he had defined the mine as ‘the beating heart of Silesia’.”
Every closure, corporate merger, or staff reduction had a significant social impact. In 1998, Jerzy Buzek introduced the first “parachute” package for dismissed or redundant miners, which was also supported by the trade union Solidarność. The reform replaced the previous strategy of a hiring freeze and was intended to urge miners to take voluntary redundancy: the company offered older workers early retirement, while younger workers were offered compensation of 40,000 zlotys (around 10,000 euros). This sum was intended to encourage former miners to set up new businesses or to retrain for a different profession.
“So many people squandered the money and spent it on cars and holidays, then alcohol and depression took over and destroyed many families,” Hubka, the trade unionist, says. “There were also a high number of suicides.”. The reform had cost the state approximately 2.4 billion dollars by 2002, but 35 per cent of the 30,000 miners who had received compensation had still not found alternative employment.
“Even today, most miners don’t have the expertise or tools to start a business, and are often left to fend for themselves,” says Chwiluk. According to a studyby the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the state has provided no support to former miners to find new employment, apart from an optional retraining course.
Katowice City Council member Patryk Białas considers Buzek’s reform the first real attempt to implement a socially just energy transition. “There have been positive examples, as in the case of Katowice, and negative ones. But it’s worth remembering that Poland couldn’t rely on the European Union back then.
Cities in Silesia attempt to regenerate
An oft-cited example of the least successful experiences of a fair transition is the city of Bytom, one of the numerous mining hubs surrounding Katowice. The city was in such a precarious condition a decade ago that events as serious as a building collapse ceased to even make the news. Bytom had rapidly depopulated during the second half of the 1990s due to the high rates of unemployment. Several abandoned 19th-century buildings, almost on the verge of collapse, are evident today when walking through the streets in the centre of the city. However, Białas assures us that the situation in the Old Town has greatly improved, and the policy appears to have learned from past mistakes.
Two-thirds of the coal mines in Poland have been closed over the past 30 years, and the number of workers has dropped to just over 80,000 compared to the more than 400,000 workers previously employed in the industry. This slow but inexorable decline has diminished the economic and social fabric of many urban centres that had previously thrived on coal. The regional unemployment rate soared to 20 per cent following the wave of closures between 1999 and 2006, which triggered an economic crisis in several cities in Lower and Upper Silesia.
Similar to Bytom, the city of Wałbrzych also experienced some dark periods. The closures that started in 1995 left 14,000 unemployed miners living there. Twenty years later, Wałbrzych is showing signs of economic recovery, although unemployment rates are still above the national average. One of the symbols of this renaissance is Centrum Nauki i Sztuki Stara Kopalnia, the country’s largest post-industrial tourist attraction. It is an old coal mine that has been converted into an art museum with an exhibition centred on the local history of mining.
In 2022, the European Commission allocated 2.4 billion euros to support the ecological transition of Silesia and Western Małopolska. Funding was provided to promote the development of clean energy sources, to remedy environmental damage caused by mining, and to decontaminate nearly 3,000 hectares of land. Historically, Silesia is among Europe’s worst regions for air pollution while serious problems with the management of mining wastecontribute to the pollution of vegetation and surface and groundwater.
Poland still faces an enormous challenge related to energy. Mines are closing and power plants continue to burn the most polluting fossil fuel, largely imported from abroad. In Katowice, meanwhile, residents and miners alike are wondering how long it will take for renewable sources to replace coal.
This article was produced with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
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