Agnieszka Tomaszewska

Solidarity means responsibility for other people

Recent weeks have abounded with events related to counteracting climate change in which we have had our share. Because of all the preparations, I have not been able to write about them earlier, which I hope, you will forgive me. Here are some of the events.

On 5 November, at the Embassy conference centre, about 80 people gathered to find out more about a publication of the Foundation for the Development of Polish Agriculture (FDPA) “Renewable energy sources and measures for adapting to climate change in agriculture and in rural areas – examples of EU experience”. Apart from the speeches of the Ambassador and the President of the Foundation, we had an opportunity to listen to a discussion of ten experts – the authors of the publication. The discussion was facilitated by the Editor-in-Chief of the „Czysta Energia” [Clean Energy] monthly. The experts agreed that climate change was taking place. They also gave some specific examples of changes in nature which were a consequence of climate change. An amusing but at the same time a bitter example was given by Anna Grzybek, PhD, the book’s scientific editor. She talked about the extinction of male aphids. I suppose that a lot of us immediately thought about a very popular Polish comedy film, “Sex Mission”, presenting a world without men. 

One of the chapters of the FDPA publication has been devoted to renewable energy in the United Kingdom. I would like to use this opportunity and thank our colleagues from DECC and FCO for their assistance in collecting the materials. Those who are interested in the contents of the publication should check the following link.

On Monday, 9 November, together with my colleague from the Press & Communications section we accompanied the Ambassador to the Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw to participate in the final stage of another, spring-summer edition of the social campaign run by the Centre for Citizenship Education (CEO) “Active by nature. Climate change – be a solution” . On this occasion, teams representing twenty schools from all over the country came to Warsaw. For the event, young people had prepared special stands presenting the projects implemented in their area, took part in workshops given by experts and had an opportunity to meet their peers from other regions. It was a  truly unusual event and very spectacular too, with prospects for developing to a larger scale in future. In his address, Mr. Krzysztof Stanowski, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education highlighted the importance of projects promoting protection of climate  implemented by young people. He said something that particularly appealed to me: “Solidarity means responsibility for other people”.

On the occasion of the CEO event, the Ambassador has been interviewed by Polish Radio. In the interview he has talked about the work of our Climate and Energy Unit, and cooperation with Polish government and organisations involved in projects promoting low carbon economy. The Ambassador has also mentioned the example of a British campaign “Act on CO2”, which, similarly to the CEO project, is addressed to the public, including young people of school age. 

Thanks to the Press & Communications section of the Embassy, a short video of the event in the Palace of Science and Culture will soon be ready. We will place it on our website, which I strongly encourage you to visit regularly.

Posted at 14:35 19 November 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

Ed Miliband in Poland

On 7 October I had a chance to meet Ed Miliband (on the photograph). The UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change came to Poland to hold meetings with representatives of the Polish government before the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen. He talked to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Jacek Rostowski and to senior officials of the Office of the Committee for European Integration, Ministry of Economy and other departments. He also gave an interview to the Rzeczpospolita daily.

In the afternoon, we arrived at the Warsaw School of Economics, where Ed Miliband gave a speech on why it is necessary to sign an ambitious global agreement to address climate change. In the Minister’s opinion, both moral arguments and responsibility for the planet we are going to leave to future generations as well as economic reasons call for such a solution. The cost of tackling climate change  is currently estimated at the level of 1% GDP, but if we decide to act only in ten or twenty years, the cost will be much higher. Ed Miliband also said that in order to reduce the costs of CO2 emissions, China, India and other big economies of the world should actively join the fight against climate change. The Minister indicated, however, that according to the UK, rich countries should support developing countries financially and help fund the projects leading to carbon reduction, as it would be impossible for those countries to finance such expensive projects on their own. At the end of his speech, Mr. Milliband quoted Jacek Kuroń, who said “Who if not you?”, the question that reminds us all that we are the ones who are responsible for what is happening around us and for the legacy we are going to leave to future generations. I think that these words could be a good motto for the Copenhagen summit.

I must say that I really enjoyed the question-and-answer part of the lecture, with questions asked by the audience: students, non-governmental organisations and representatives of business. While answering those questions, Ed Miliband had to talk about things as diverse as the role of business in fighting climate change and support that could be given by individual governments, through nuclear energy, to Al Gore’s documentary, to what UK would perceive as a success of the Copenhagen Summit, with only 60 days to the conference date.

Posted at 14:49 12 October 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[1]

Polish energy experts on a study visit to the UK

I am just browsing through photographs from a study visit to the UK of Ms. Ewa Kałuzińska and Mr. Bronisław Nowak, local government experts from Lubin and Cieszyn. The visit was a special prize funded by the British Embassy in the Most Energy Efficient Community in Poland competition, organised by the Polish National Energy Conservation Agency.
The visit in Woking , Leicester   and Southampton  took place in mid September and was one of our very special projects. Polish experts had an opportunity to see some practical aspects of fighting climate change and to visit the projects recently completed in those cities. The sites included railway stations, sports centres with roofs covered with solar panels and photovoltaic cells as well as small CHP units generating heat and electricity for the local area. The participants also visited cultural centres and houses of highest energy efficiency standards.
I know that it has been a very good study visit so I would like to thank all our partners involved in organising it. The photos I’ve received will be used to illustrate the interview that I’m going to carry out with the participants. We will publish the interview on our Embassy website and will make it available to all organisations interested in the UK experience with tackling climate change.

Posted at 14:14 09 October 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

Biomass market in Poland

On 5 June I went to Płońsk to attend a conference devoted to the production of energy crops for use by the energy sector. The conference officially launched the PKPP Lewiatan project on the development of the biomass market in Poland. 

The 150 participants included farmers, agricultural advisors from local branches of the Mazovia Agricultural Advisory Centre and local authorities. Business was represented by Vattenfall Heat Poland S.A., who presented the results of a feasibility study of an energy willow plantation. I learned from the presentation that willow is a perennial plant, which is grown for 15-20 years, and is harvested every 3 years. In Poland it may be best grown on class III-VI soil and the size of a plantation recommended by Vattenfall Heat is 10-20 hectares.

As far as I know, the climate and energy package, adopted in December 2008, assumes that by 2020, the European Union will have reduced the CO2 emissions by 20%. In case of Poland, in order to reach this objective, the proportion of renewable energy, including biomass, in the energy mix should be 15%. However, experts say, that there is little awareness of the role farmers can play in fulfilling the EU commitments. In order to address this challenge, PKPP Lewiatan has prepared a practical guide for farmers, “Growing crops for the energy sector”. It contains information about where, when and what plants to grow. The guide is available at the website of PKPP Lewiatan as well as in the seat of the organisation.

In my view, the meeting in Płońsk provided a good opportunity for dialogue between business and farmers. The former have presented an offer of cooperation, while the farmers shared their concerns whether biomass production would be sufficient for them to make a living. We have not seen a lot of meetings like that in Poland so far. Therefore I think that the Płońsk seminar was an important event. I wonder if and how this cooperation will develop.

Posted at 16:23 29 June 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

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]

Carbon Trust needed...

A number of activities aiming to increase energy efficiency assume cooperation with the business. This is certainly true about the project of PKPP Lewiatan "Promoting legislation and good practice to support improvement of energy efficiency in Poland".
 
PKPP Lewiatan, in cooperation with the Polish National Energy Conservation Agency, have prepared a report on the most energy-consuming industries in Poland. Those include chemical industry, steel, glass, cement  industries and many others. The Report identifies barriers to the implementation of solutions promoting energy efficiency in industrial plants and gives practical advice on how to reduce the industrial processes energy consumption.
 
One of the Report's recommendations is to form an organisation in Poland that would operate on similar principles as the Carbon Trust in the UK. The British Embassy has just been asked to assist in the preparation of a visit by Carbon Trust representatives to Poland. The visit would provide a chance to discuss practical aspects of the Trust's activities. We know that a lot of people and organisations are interested in meeting the British experts. I hope that in the coming months I will have a chance to report on  the visit and let you know about its outcomes.

Posted at 10:54 19 March 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

We are speeding up...

We are approaching the end of the FCO's financial year, which means speeding up the work on some of the projects. Every day brings new challenges and new experience. Our activities require preparation and time, and there is always too little of the latter...
 
Last week, the Public Opinion Research Centre CBOS, and the British Embassy, agreed the final version of the questionnaire to poll the Polish public about climate change perception. As it usually happens with this type of projects, choosing the right wording for the questions and all the consultations that involved, required a lot of commitment on the part of the Energy and Climate Team, the Embassy’s Press and Communications Section as well as CBOS, which had won the project delivery competition. It was important to us that in the poll, the climate issues should be treated in a comprehensive way and the views shared by the respondents should be as close to the reality as possible.  The CBOS pollsters are already in the field with the questionnaires and we can’t wait to see the survey results!  
 
A few days ago, I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Tom Corcut, economic advisor and the Head of the Carbon Emissions Trading Team at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. Tom came to Poland for the launch of a UKIE [Polish Office of the Committee for European Integration] project, Impact Assessment for Poland of the EU  ETS Directive. The project is implemented with the support of demosEuropa and the British Embassy and co-funded from the UK FCO programme supporting low carbon economy - Strategic Programme Fund Low Carbon High Growth  (SPF LCHG). Tom Corcut gave a presentation on Impact Assessment for ETS Directive in the UK and answered questions from Polish experts interested in using the British methodology in preparing the Impact Assessment for Poland. It was the first of a series of consultation meetings planned under the project, so I believe I will soon be able to write more about the progress of the works.
 
Our list of tasks for the nearest future includes a semi-annual report on projects implementation, work on another set of project proposals which we will present to SPF LCHG next week.  On top of that, there will be some new events to coordinate in the coming weeks. There is no time for boredom in the Climate and Energy Team!
 

Posted at 15:13 13 March 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

London calling…

After a few days of fighting a nasty flu that seemed to have taken control of Warsaw, on 27 January, I went to London. And I noticed that winter was following in my footsteps to the UK. Believe me, I had not planned that ;)

During my visit in London I met a representative of the Strategic Programme Fund Low Carbon High Growth (SPF LCHG) team, which coordinates the allocation of funds and activities related to implementation of projects, including the Polish ones. As a result of our talks, a representative of SPF LCHG had been invited to visit Warsaw in May. It will be a perfect opportunity to meet organisations implementing the projects and to see how they operate on a day-to-day basis.

During the rest of my stay I attended a programme management training course which, I suppose, significantly influenced my views on how to coordinate several projects seeking a common goal. In case of SPF projects, this goal is to support investment in low carbon economy. All project proposals submitted to our Embassy's Climate and Energy Team should satisfy this requirement so that we can effectively cooperate with our Polish partners and share with them the UK experience in tackling climate change.

Posted at 16:30 10 February 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[2]

... and things keep happening at a breathtaking pace.

Together with the Press & Communications section, we have been involved in consultations with opinion polling centres interested in carrying out research on climate change perception among Polish people. It is one of the most interesting social projects we have the pleasure to support. I'm very glad to be able to be a part of it.
 
Over the last few weeks, a number of new ideas for cooperation with Polish partners have reached our Climate and Energy Team. Most of them involve presentation of UK experience in fighting climate change, including the use of new technology, improving energy efficiency or increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy generation and distribution systems. Some of those projects would be worth implementing before the end of the financial year (that is before the end of March). Others will have to wait until April. Some examples of projects implemented with our support in 2008 can be found on our website.
 

Posted at 12:33 26 January 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[1]

2008 went by so fast...

Just before Christmas, the Projects Committee held a meeting, chaired by Michael Halpin, the Head of the British Embassy Climate and Energy Team. We selected the best five proposals for low carbon economy projects submitted to the Embassy by Polish organisations.

Two of them involve carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. This is an important issue for the UK. David Miliband , UK Foreign Secretary, mentioned it recently in his blog. It has also been attracting more and more interest in Poland, especially in the context of the Climate-Energy Package.
  
The other projects refer to issues such as improving energy efficiency and increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix. The institutions which submitted the projects include non-governmental organisations, think-tanks and research institutes.  Following the meeting, we sent the projects to the Project Committee of the FCO Strategic Programme Fund Low Carbon High Growth - SPF LCHG . In mid-January we shall find out which proposals will pass on to the next stage of the competition.

I would really like our projects to be approved by the SPF LCHG as they are both interesting and innovative. Their implementation will promote investment in modern technologies and job creation. New jobs may appear in those sectors of the economy which will develop as a result of climate protection activities. This has already happened in some Western European countries.
 
The year 2008 was a fascinating time in the history of the still quite young British Embassy Climate and Energy Team. Between April and December we were involved in a number of visits, meetings and events, preceding the COP14 climate conference in Poznań  and the EU summit in Brussels. I can't remember ever before meeting, in such a short time, so many people devoted to climate protection. I know that we will go on working together in the coming year and that we will all face some more breakthroughs in the near future. I will certainly write about them in my blog.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

Posted at 11:51 08 January 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

Launch of a CCS project

My name is Agnieszka Tomaszewska and I am a projects coordinator at the Climate and Energy Team at the British Embassy in Warsaw. The Team was created in April 2008, and this is my first entry in this blog. I am glad that I will be able to tell you what we do and in particular, to share  information about climate and energy projects implemented in Poland with the support of the British Embassy.
 
I recently came back from Poznań. Since 1st December, the COP 14 meeting has been in progress there.  Experts and politicians from almost all countries of the world have been reflecting on the future of the global climate policy. Under the COP14 logo, apart from negotiations carried out by state delegations, a number of exhibitions have been organised as well as information stands and other accompanying events.

The reason for my visit in Poznań, and actually not Poznań itself but the village of Będlewo, 30 km from Poznań, was the launch of a CSS (carbon capture and storage) project. The project is implemented by the Polish Confederation of Private Employers (PKPP Lewiatan)  (a Polish equivalent of CBI) in cooperation with the Polish Platform for Clean Coal Technology. It is supported by the British Embassy in the form of a grant from the Strategic Programme Fund Low Carbon High Growth (SPF LCHG) , a UK FCO programme promoting low carbon economy.

Even though CCS was not the main topic of the conference in Będlewo, which bore the title “Clean coal and nuclear technologies for combating climate change”, this issue did raise a lot of interest. It is generally known that Polish government wants two of the CCS demonstration plants to be located in Poland. However, there is no consensus in the EU yet, as to the source of funding for this project. It seems that an agreement on this may be reached during the Climate and Energy Package discussions later this week. 

The representatives of the Polish government and the energy sector, attending the conference, admitted that CCS technologies may be successfully applied in Poland and prof. Jerzy Buzek – a Member of the European Parliament and the conference organiser – emphasised that Poland should become a European leader in clean coal technologies. However, CCS installations are very expensive and there is still a number of questions to be answered before the construction works can begin. The project of PKPP Lewiatan provides a good opportunity to launch a national debate over those issues. 

 
On my way back from the conference I looked through a few project applications submitted to the Embassy for a new low carbon projects competition. For a few weeks now I have been sending comments back to the applicant organisations. The consultation process takes some time but I would really like the applications to be very well prepared: they must fulfill the SPF LCHG criteria, must be clear and transparent. Only the best applications will be sent to London in mid December, where the SPF LCHG team will assess them and decide whether funds can be awarded. There are still so many fascinating projects that could be implemented in Poland. I look forward to seeing more!

Posted at 17:18 05 January 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]