Agnieszka Tomaszewska

Energy efficiency and Polish industry

As a part of the project “Promoting low carbon energy mix solutions for Polish business sectors”, PKPP Lewiatan in cooperation with the  Polish National Energy Conservation Agency (KAPE) have prepared a report which provides an analysis of the energy efficiency of the key Polish energy consuming industries: food industry, paper industry, chemical industry, mineral and steel industry. Last week the contents of the report were discussed during two events I had the pleasure to attend.

On 25 March I visited the headquarters of KAPE which hosted a meeting of representatives of the biggest chemical companies. During the meeting the businessmen talked about barriers to introducing low carbon solutions in their businesses. It was interesting to hear about practical ways to increase energy efficiency of Polish enterprises. They included improving the efficiency of  lighting systems, pumps, boilers or air conditioning systems. The list of recommendations is long and its full version can be found in the report.

On 26 March I attended another meeting, with representatives of the Economic Committee and the Energy Sub-Committee of the Polish Parliament, representatives of the Ministry of Economy and the Energy Regulatory Office. The parts of the report  presented by KAPE and PKPP Lewiatan on that occasion focused on those measures improving energy efficiency that depended mainly on the government policy and actions. They included a mechanism of voluntary long term obligations or, similar to the solutions adopted in the UK,  forms of regular consultation between  the industry, the government and the public. The meeting participants wondered which of those solutions could be applied in Poland in the near future and what the Parliament and the government planned to do in order to encourage businesses to improve their energy efficiency. 

I was glad to hear that the project supported by the Embassy was important for Polish economy and that there was scope for cooperation between Poland and United Kingdom in sharing good practice. If we manage to arrange a visit to Poland of Carbon Trust and other UK institutions dealing with energy efficiency it will be the first important step towards developing this cooperation.

Posted at 16:25 17 April 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[1]