Polish Energy Sector Research Articles

Communication management in public sectors: the case of the Polish energy sector

Public sectors differ from private so corporate PR strategies and instruments can’t be simply copied by public institutions. Because of that it was crucial to create a new theoretical background fit for specific frames of the sector that would enable to take under consideration economic aspects of public activities.

LCA analysis as a tool to assess the impact of electricity production on the environment / Analiza LCA jako narzędzie służące do oceny wpływu produkcji energii elektrycznej na środowisko

The paper presents a method for Life Cycle Assessment LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) to evaluate the ecological characteristics of products, presents a procedure for the implementation of the LCA with an overview of the various stages. Moreover the validity of using this method to evaluate the energy sector. The article also points to the directions of the Polish energy sector and pointed to the need to determine the environmental risks associated with the production of energy. Energy industry in Poland, the structure of energy production requires special supervision. The use of coal and lignite as a primary fuel results in significant the environmental impact.

Barriers to Developing Competition in the Polish Electricity and Gas Market

The paper presents main barriers of creating a competitive energy market in Poland. Polish energy and gas sector in space of few recent years underwent breakthrough changes as far as regulations, structure, organisation and ownership are concerned. Drivers of change included the necessity to align national regulations with EU standards through transposition, and creating entities strong enough to finance their own investment outlays. As a result of those changes, both private and public producers and providers can compete for customers whilst using the regulated network infrastructure. Through those changes regulatory bodies were established and some of the following measures were used: TPA rule, accounting unbundling, legal unbundling and functional unbundling, merger & acquisition supervision on the national and regional level, state aid programmes and a range of other instruments facilitating consumer access to competitive power purchase offers concerning energy and natural gas. However, electricity and gas markets still remain dominated by market incumbents plus the competition is still limited, particularly so in the natural gas market. Among barriers impeding development of Polish energy sector and liberalisation of electricity and gas markets are: vertical consolidation in the sector; wrong architecture of the wholesale market; unstable regulatory environment; maintaining retail prices for households regulated; low consumer activity in the energy market.

Polityka klimatyczna UE a rozwój polskiej energetyki konwencjonalnej

The study's aim is the analysis and the assessment the EU climate policy and its impacts on the development of conditions of the Polish conventional energy sector. The EU climate policy has a strong influence on Polish energy sector to the year 2020 and further. The position of Polish energy sector is unusual in Europe due to the structure of domestic energy balance. This all with confrontation to the EU aspirations for low carbon economy gives uncertain perspectives for the conventional energy sector. The very ambitious EU climate package and the New Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) led Poland to enormous investments in modernization of coal power and heat plants, very expensive CCS technologies and nuclear power plants. The energy sector isn't able to finance all theseprograms. The climate package and the IED will generate also the increase of energy prices in the next two decades which will be very difficult to absorpt by the national industry and households.

Low Carbon Economy Policy in Poland: an Example of the Impact of Europeanisation

Poland has made a commitment to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and by participating in the climate policy of the European Union (EU). EUClimate and Energy Package (CEP), which was negotiated in 2008 and has been successively introduced into the EUlegal system. The CEP introduces much stricter require­ments for the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions and imposes higher costs on the adjust­ment of Polish energy sector and other sectors of Polish economy to the requirements of the EUlaw. The influence of the EUon the Member States during the course of European integra­tion is described in the literature of the subject as europeanisation. In this study Iwill analyse the influence on the policy of the Polish government with respect to stimulating the develop­ment of low carbon economy (including industry).

Implementation of TPA (Third Party Access) principle in Polish energy sector

The liberalization of energy sector in Poland is conducted according to the conclusions deriving from the criticism of the traditional theory of regulation – the TPA principle is an instrument enabling introducing competition in energy trade subsector. However, in spite of formal assurance that the right to change electricity supplier is granted to all recipients, only a small number of entitled entities exercise this privilege. It is only the group of big industrial buyers among whom growing interest to exercise the TPA principle can be observed. The barriers to changing electricity supplier include economic, technical and formal ones. Removing them in the future will result in the increase of competition scale in energy sector.

Polish electric energy sector just before accessing European Union

This paper briefly describes the transformation of the electric energy sector in Poland. It gives data for this sector (installed capacity, electric energy production and consumption) and describes privatisation process of the plants and distribution companies. The barriers of the electric energy sector development are presented, too.

Internalisation of external costs in the Polish power generation sector: A partial equilibrium model

This paper presents a methodical framework, which is the basis for the economic analysis of the mid-term planning of development of the Polish energy system. The description of the partial equilibrium model and its results are demonstrated for different scenarios applied. The model predicts the generation, investment and pricing of mid-term decisions that refer to the Polish electricity and heat markets. The current structure of the Polish energy sector is characterised by interactions between the supply and demand sides of the energy sector. The supply side regards possibilities to deliver fuels from domestic and import sources and their conversion through transformation processes. Public power plants, public CHP plants, industry CHP plants and municipal heat plants represent the main producers of energy in Poland. Demand is characterised by the major energy consumers, i.e. industry and construction, transport, agriculture, trade and services, individual consumers and export. The relationships between the domestic electricity and heat markets are modelled taking into account external costs estimates. The volume and structure of energy production, electricity and heat prices, emissions, external costs and social welfare of different scenarios are presented. Results of the model demonstrate that the internalisation of external costs through the increase in energy prices implies significant improvement in social welfare.

The selected problems of energy sector development in new economic conditions

General problems of energy market development in Poland are addressed. The structure of Polish energy sector and conditions of its functioning are presented. The general concept of national and local energy market organisation is also discussed. This is particularly crucial in programming the processes of investments in the energy sector under new economic conditions in Poland.

ELECTRIC UTILITY DEMAND‐SIDE MANAGEMENT IN POLAND

Demand‐Side Management (DSM) improves load factors and energy efficiency and reduces emissions. DSM methods are understood in the United States, but using DSM in Poland poses problems related to constraints in the power sector and the economic environment. This paper discusses the reorganization of the Polish energy sector and Polish energy policy during in the transition since 1989 and discusses the obstacles to implementing DSM programs.