Legal possibilities of carbon capture and storage in Poland

Abstract

An obvious and widening discrepancy appears between the major aims of the climate policy of the European Union and situation of countries such as Poland, which, to the broad extent, take advantage of their domestic coal resources within their energy mix. The vicious circle connected with energy basket dominated by that resource consists in the fact that the more the coal is being relied on (and, at the same time, the more the energy security of a given country is increased – as even in case of insufficient domestic resources, coal is relatively cheap and can be purchased elsewhere), the biggest problem there appears with regard to compliance with targets of greenhouse gases emissions reductions. Assuming that the price for an emission quota attained 20 euro, the cost of production of energy from coal would double1. The aforementioned targets get more and more acute as the European Union policy in this respect, deliberately overlooking the impression which