Poland

Poland has substantially reduced its emissions since 1990, but the downward trend stopped in 2001. The reasons can be found in the development of two sectors. Firstly, the transport sector, which grew over twofold in the last 20 years, as a result of rapid growth in car ownership fuelled by the development of the road network and massive import of old cars to the country. Secondly, land use sector LULUCF substantially reduced its ability to remove CO2 emissions during the same period. Polish land use policy is very inefficient in stopping urban sprawl and it also allows for the use of significant quantities of wood in the energy sector, an activity it pretends to be renewable. Only the waste sector managed to reduce emissions all the way to 2019, but it is the one with a lower share in overall emissions. Energy, agriculture and industry did not reduce emissions at all in the period 2000-2019. 

Unfortunately, the policy prospects are not promising at all. Poland does not have a national Long Term Strategy for reduction of emissions to 2050, therefore it produced a National Energy Policy up to 2040, which falls very short in ambition on climate issues. The emission target for 2040 is set for -30% in comparison to current levels (-43% in comparison to 1990 levels) which is way below what is needed to stay below 1.5°C. This is because Poland does not pay much attention to the transition in the energy sector and is currently developing only its photovoltaic potential, while wind and biogas have been stopped since early 2016. Also energy efficiency is not at the backbone of the energy policy, while Poland has a possibility to use it widely. 

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NOTE: When targets or projections from NECP or from another sectoral strategy document are available, the tool calculates the difference between the realised data and the target in percentage. The percentages that can be found on the country pages and on the right side of each graph are based on this calculation. If the country does not have projections or targets for the year of the latest realised data, the percentages do not exist.