‘Poland has the potential to abandon coal sooner than Great Britain,’ said Jennifer Tyldesley, minister-counsellor for economic affairs at the Embassy of the United Kingdom during the European Economic Congress in Katowice.

As the British diplomat said Poland and Great Britain were quite similar in terms of the role of coal and the mining sector in its economies. Poland is currently facing the challenge that Great Britain faced in the 1980s during Margaret Thatcher’s government which led the country through difficult reforms and a move away from coal.

‘Back in 2012, 40 per cent of the British energy mix was based on coal, today it is only 2%. Britain moved away from coal as quickly as possible. In my opinion, Poland has the potential to go through this transformation even faster, she said at the EEC Talks during the Congress’.

The Polish wnp.pl website points out that in the UK, the political decision to move away from fossil fuels has been made consistently by all political parties. There was full agreement that ‘the sooner this process is started, the better’ and that the decision made the transformation easier for the country.

Moreover, the UK’s exit from the European Union has not changed the attitude towards the green transformation. Even though this country no longer has to meet the EU’s climate ambitions, it still leads in this respect.

The diplomat also said that the common direction of the energy transformation creates new areas for business cooperation between Polish and British companies.

‘We are already working on many projects together, including investments in photovoltaics in Poland, carried out with British investors. We also have a very strong offer for Poland in the offshore sector, as one of the largest players in the offshore wind energy industry in the world. We, just like Poland, face the same challenges in the field of renewable energy sources, and we invest equally in nuclear energy, both large- and small-scale. As you can see, we complement each other in many areas. The business opportunities here are truly enormous,’ said Tyldesley.

Author: Tomasz Modrzejewski

Source: wnp.pl

Photo: X/WojenneH