Energy

The electricity generation sector in Poland is still largely fossil-fuel based. Many power plants nationwide use Poland's position as a major European exporter of coal to their advantage by continuing to use coal as the primary raw material in production of their energy; in 2007, hard bituminous coal contributed 48% of energy generation, brown coal and gas 12% each and oil 23%. Currently the three largest Polish coal mining firms (Weglokoks, Kompania Węglowa and JSW) extract around 100 million tonnes of coal annually; all three of these companies are key constituents of the Warsaw Stock Exchange's lead economic indexes.

Renewable forms of energy currently only account for a small proportion of Poland's full energy generation capacity. However, the national government has set targets for the development of renewable energy sources in Poland which should see the portion of power produced by renewable resources climb to 7.5% by 2010 and 15% by 2020. This is to be achieved mainly through the construction of wind farms and a number of hydroelectric stations.


Poland is thought to have around 164,800,000,000 m³ of proven natural gas reserves and around 96,380,000 barrels of proven oil reserves. These reserves are currently attended to and exploited by energy supply companies such as PKN Orlen (the only Polish company listed in the Fortune Global 500).


 However, due to the small amounts of fossil fuels naturally occurring in Poland not being enough to satisfy the full energy consumption needs of the population and thus need to buy from abroad, the country is considered to be a net importer of oil and natural gas.