The review of Polish formal and legal aspects related to hydropower plants.

Abstract

In recent years, dynamic growth of expenditure on environmental protection has been observed in European Union (EU) countries (Tsireme et al. 2012). Access to EU funds has allowed significant resources for the financing of investment and ecological activities to accumulate in some countries (Kulczycka and Smol 2016). Renewable power engineering sector investments are recognised, by virtue of the European Parliament and Council Directive 2009/28/EC of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources as important sources of energy, supported due to the care about the environment. Thus, the benefits from execution of such investments are highly valued in both regional and global scale, especially in the aspect of climatic changes and progressing pollution of the environment (Mennicken et al. 2016). To confirm the priority of sources of energy recognised as renewable and friendly to the environment, the directive imposes the obligation of generating and managing resources of renewable source energy, thus defining the objectives for the member countries, including Poland—at 15% of the gross final consumption of energy by 2020. Research addressing the development of the use of hydropower engineering and its improvement (Kougias et al. 2016a, b) and improvement of conditions of the functioning of the facilities is conducive for new projects executed in many parts of the world (Chang et al. 2010) and Europe (Bodis et al. 2014, Pacesila et al. 2016). Consumption of energy generated in hydropower plants constitutes an important share in the final consumption of gross energy. At the end of 2011, over 160 countries had hydropower resource capacity, with a total capacity of 936 GW across 11,000 hydropower stations. The leading generating countries were China (61.4 Mtoe per year), Canada (29.9 Mtoe per year), Brazil (36.9 Mtoe per year) and the USA (23 Mtoe per year), respectively, although it is worth noting that Norway and India both have significant hydropower generation, particularly relative to their size and total electricity supply (World Energy Council 2016). In Poland, installed power in hydropower plants in 2015 was estimated at 977,676 MW (URE 2016). Figures 1 and 2 present the data on installed power in Polish hydropower plants and forecasts resulting from EU obligations. The legislation of the countries of the EU provides the basic definitions in the directives then determine the community attitude to many aspects, including to the use of renewable sources of energy. Unification of terms in the pursuit to achieve the ultimate objectives, defined in the basic community document (the said Directive 2009/28/EC), has the key significance and is focused on achieving the goal that is often commonly called B3 × 20^. The definition of Brenewable energy source^ follows which has been evolving in the successive Bpower^ directives (Table 1). Communicated by: Philippe Garrigues