Vatican report points finger at Polish coal

A new encyclical to be published by the Vatican this week is heavily critical of the use of fossil fuels, with the daily Rzeczpospolita reminding its readers that Poland is one of the biggest producers of coal, and hence also CO2 emissions.

The document, to be released on 18 June, devotes a large amount of text to the question of brown coal excavation, the daily Rzeczpospolita reports. Those countries, including Poland, that produce a lot of coal, are destroying the environment, the report notes.

“The encyclical is certainly not directed against hard working miners,” Franciscan Stanisław Jaromi, head of the Saint Francis Ecology Movement, said.

“It is rather an attempt to turn global authorities’ attention to the sector,” he added. “For years we have heard talk about restructuring, introducing new technologies that would lower CO2 and basically not much has actually happened,” Jaromi told Rzeczpospolita.

Coal mining in Poland produces about 55 percent of primary energy consumption and 75 percent of electricity generation. Poland is the second-largest coal-mining country in Europe, after Germany, and the ninth-largest coal producer in the world. The country consumes nearly all the coal it mines.

In January PM Ewa Kopacz rescinded plans to restructure the industry in the face of strong opposition from mining unions, long a political force to be reckoned with and for many an impediment to genuine moves to alter Poland’s energy mix.