Lucky Man: Wind and Politics

The president vetoed the Windmill Act. This decision is the culmination of a process that shows the function played by today's media stars show-business, called erroneous politicians. Today, they are alternatively middlemen, roaming between real centres of power than the elite of the country, deciding their own fate.

The president stood on the "social side" in a conflict of interests between large cities and the province. After all, large-town communities do not feel the nuisance of this origin of energy, which needs immense areas for operation. This problem is borne by the village. So this decision goes well to the voters of the president and his party.

Imagine that in front of our home they put a structure, of a tallness comparable to the Palace of Culture (the highest windmill in Poland is 210 meters). And it's making sound and flashing your eyes for the remainder of your days. Happy? So from this “luck” The president saved large groups of Poles' villages and tiny cities.

Law and Justice sided with their voters as they pushed for power in 2015. At that time, the anti-window movement (StopWiatrakom) played a major function in promoting this party, and this 1 was thanked by the celebrated and present liquidated, "the 10H Act". The 10H rule (i.e. 10 times the tallness of the wind strategy is the minimum distance of the windmill from residential buildings and nature conservation areas at present heights of these installations (from 150 to 200 meters) is 1 and a half kilometres from the homes. There's not much left to build these monsters.

The hit was a good one. For almost 3 years this frozen completely the improvement of windmills in Poland. Of course, during this time, PiS spent without blinking its eyes borrowed money to subsidize solar panels, which as a consequence burdened roofs over 1.5 million houses in Poland. It did not look at the burden on the costs and functioning of the energy system. Who even cares about specified matters in Poland! After all, the thought was to bribe the village and the provincial mediate class. The essence of things is to do good to your electorate.

However, the interests of those who have the same authority as the voters must besides be taken into account. That's the ones who pay. The political elites of specified a country as Poland and the functioning of the socio-economic strategy pay off. So erstwhile the Green Lobby could not break through the opposition of the PiS, the European Commission stepped in. She simply halted the supply of money for the hungry political elites who live off the sharing of the incoming EU funds. This is just blackmail, publically announced, which did not weaken the force of destruction. Law and Justice kneeled through Brussels and the government prepared a bill, eliminating the 10H rule and allowing to build within 500 metres of the homes. The same 500 metres that the president of Poland has now vetoed from the same party. Only the revolt of the PiS MPs removed these structures from homes to 700 meters. But the 2016 regulation was broken.

However, for betraying the interests of agrarian communities, PiS did not receive real silver pieces (called in the political jargon of the KPO and with much more value – EUR 60 billion). They only affected the accounts of a new, already more delicate government towards the Union. Donald Tusk's government is to pay off these liabilities. But with mediocre results, as you can see.

The effect for the Polish economy is that renewable sources (RES), the caresses of the EU's energy transformation, powerfully spread in the Polish energy mix and beat further records. June was the first period in our past erstwhile renewable energy production was larger than coal. And erstwhile green grows, black falls. If in 2021 coal (stone and lignite) supplied 80% of the energy produced in Poland, in 2024 it was only 57%. Thus, coal extraction is rapidly decreasing – in the last 2 years it has decreased by 9 percent each year.

With the collapse of coal and energy, the Silesian agglomeration shrinks. Katowice – in 1987 it had a population of 369 thousand, and until present it lost a quarter. Częstochowa, from the 1993 improvement Summit, reduced the population by 22%. The fastest (by 30%) Sosnowiec disappears – present it has 185 1000 inhabitants, and in 1987 it counted 260 thousand. The glips shrunk from 223,000 inhabitants in 1988 to 168,000 today, i.e. 25%. awesome pace, isn't it?

Andrzej Szczęsniak

Think Poland, No. 37-38 (14-21.09.2025)