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Energy Community Insights: Poland
Tour of Central & Eastern Europe: 6th stop with Poland's Energy Communities
The Life COMET project aims to transform the community energy landscape in Central and Eastern Europe through assessment, experience sharing, and coalition building. Our series of blog posts “Energy Community Insights: A Tour of Central & Eastern Europe” summarizes national assessments and action plans for enhancing energy community maturity* in Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia.
This sixth blog post explores the current landscape of energy communities in Poland, highlighting key challenges and offering policy recommendations to foster their growth and ensure long-term sustainability.
Current State of maturity of Energy Communities in Poland
Poland is still in the early stages of developing a regulatory framework that fully supports energy communities. While progress has been made, significant regulatory gaps remain, making it difficult for energy communities to thrive. Despite this, efforts are underway to create a more supportive environment for community-led energy initiatives.
The key challenges Polish energy communities are facing have been identified as the following:
Regulatory Framework and Policy Landscape
- The transposition of European directives (2018/2001 and 2019/944) into Polish law is ongoing, but the country’s regulatory framework remains incomplete. Key legislation, including the Renewable Energy Act and the Energy Law, still requires updates to align fully with EU requirements.
- A recent amendment in July 2023 introduced some positive changes, such as expanding the operational scope of energy cooperatives and energy clusters** but limitations remain.
Business Models and Financing
- Energy clusters and cooperatives in Poland face financial and operational constraints that hinder their sustainability. Cooperatives, for example, have restricted abilities to sell surplus energy, which affects their economic viability.
- While some regional and national funds exist to support energy communities, access to financing remains limited, and private investment is scarce due to regulatory and financial uncertainties.
Awareness, Networks, and Stakeholder Engagement
- Public awareness and stakeholder engagement in Poland’s energy community sector are still relatively low. While mechanisms such as public consultations exist to facilitate dialogue between policymakers and stakeholders, more efforts are needed to enhance knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
- Regional advisory bodies and cooperative associations are emerging, but their reach and influence are still developing.
Policy Recommendations for Advancing Energy Communities in Poland
To support the expansion and success of energy communities in Poland, several key policy recommendations should be considered:
Regulatory and legal reforms
- Further regulatory updates are needed to support the establishment and functioning of energy communities, including enabling energy distribution by energy communities and facilitating the integration of energy-poor households.
Economic and Financial Support
- Expanding financial support systems, such as grants and subsidies, would enhance the sustainability of energy communities.
- Allowing energy communities to sell surplus energy would create additional revenue streams and improve financial viability.
- Encouraging private investment through incentives and risk-reduction mechanisms would attract new funding sources and drive sector growth.
Improved stakeholder engagement and public awareness
- Launching public awareness campaigns would increase understanding of energy communities and encourage broader participation.
- Developing accessible platforms for dialogue between community members, policymakers, and stakeholders would foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
- Strengthening networks and advisory bodies would facilitate the exchange of best practices and accelerate community-driven energy initiatives.
Despite challenges, energy communities in Poland are gaining momentum. A key development has been the creation of the Audit Union of Energy Cooperatives (SERC), which connects stakeholders, advocates for policy changes, and fosters collaboration.
Poland has the opportunity to harness the potential of citizen-driven renewable energy projects to advance its energy transition. However, achieving this goal will require sustained political commitment and collaboration among all relevant actors, including the members of SERC. Stay tuned for our next updates on Poland’s energy community movement, where we will take a closer look at the role of SERC and its ongoing activities.
* To measure maturity, a tailor-made assessment tool was created, incorporating weighted criteria and scoring countries' performance across 11 areas: political will, transposition process, local, regional and national strategies, regulatory framework, business models, financing, collective self-consumption, networking, knowledge, awareness and stakeholder engagement. Read the full assessment for all 7 countries studied here.
** In Poland, an energy cluster is one type of energy community. An energy cluster is defined as “a civil law agreement, which may include natural persons, legal persons, scientific units, research institutes or local government units, and which pertains to the generation and balancing of demand, distribution or turnover of energy from renewable sources, or other sources or fuels, within a distribution network with a rated voltage of less than 110 kV”
