Businesses warn Poland cannot make further environmental commitments

Poland “cannot, due to threats to the economy and society from high electricity prices, accept new commitments,” members of the Chamber told a conference on climate change policy.

Referring to the EU’s Emissions Trading System, a key EU-wide policy to reduce CO2 emissions, they added, “We are calling for deep reflection about the costs and effects of the current system.”

Dr Bolesław Jankowski presented data at the conference claiming that Polish households already spend nine percent of their budgets on energy, twice as much as the majority of Europeans. By contrast households in Luxembourg and Finland spend just three percent of their budgets on energy.

Jankowski also noted that more developed EU countries have more scope to transfer rising costs of energy to individuals not businesses, thus protecting the competitiveness of their economies.

Deputy Energy Minister Michał Kurtyka, also present at the meeting, said that Poland’s transition to renewable energy should be done over “several decades” and that Poland requires a “specific, dedicated approach to implementing climate change policy.”

In December last year almost 200 countries including Poland signed a historic climate change agreement in Paris which calls for global warming to be limited to two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. (sl/rg/pk)

Source: PAP