Poland’s largest utility and the owner of Europe’s most polluting power plant expects to ditch coal entirely as early as in seven years after the country completes its plan to move all its dirty assets to a bad bank-like entity.
(Bloomberg) — Poland’s largest utility and the owner of Europe’s most polluting power plant expects to ditch coal entirely as early as in seven years after the country completes its plan to move all its dirty assets to a bad bank-like entity.
PGE SA seeks to be climate neutral at the end of the next decade, or 10 years earlier than previously expected, it said in its strategy update on Tuesday. The Warsaw-listed group kept its plan to build 2.5 gigawatts of offshore wind farms by 2030 and a 2.8 gigawatts nuclear power plant by 2040. The investments will cost more than 125 billion zloty ($30 billion) by 2030.
PGE’s announcement comes as the Warsaw government is speeding up the process to carve out coal-fired power plants from state-run utilities and transfer them to a separate entity called the National Energy Security Agency, or NABE. The draft law paving the way for NABE to receive state-guaranteed financing is yet to be approved by the parliament.
The spin-off will allow the stock exchange-traded companies to regain access to international debt markets to fund Poland’s energy transition.
The utility also said on Tuesday it sees its total 2024-2030 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, at more than 90 billion zloty.
It plans to produce 50% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 70% a decade later, compared with more than 80% from coal last year.
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