Workers at Europe’s dirtiest power plant wary of life after coal

In the industrial city of Belchatow, the logo of Polish energy giant PGE is plastered on buildings, signposts and the football kits of children dashing to after-school practice.

It is a nod to the driving force of the local economy: PGE’s coal-fired power plant – Europe’s biggest and one of the world’s top 10 polluters.

But the plant is due to close by 2036 as Europe seeks to slash planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions, a date which hangs over the city like the clouds of the smoke streaming from its cooling stacks.

“Everyone has a friend who works in the mine,” said Michal Gawrysik, a 40-year-old local shopkeeper. “Belchatow is the kind of place where nothing else is produced.”

Some 20,000 people work in the Belchatow plant, nearby mines and in other related jobs in the region. Closing the plant could spell doom for the city of 55,000 people and the surrounding area.

Belchatow also generates around 20% of Poland’s electricity.

It’s a taboo topic for workers, who preferred not to give surnames, over fear of losing their jobs.

“It’s suicide,” said Krzystof, a miner at Belchatow.

The Belchatow plant is one of the world’s top 10 “super polluter” power plants responsible for a disproportionate impact on the climate.

It emitted about 27 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, satellite data from Climate Trace showed, equivalent to about 8.6% of Poland’s entire CO2 emissions.

Sitting on some of the largest coal reserves in Poland, at its 1980s peak Belchatow employed tens of thousands of people.

But rising pressure from the European Union and a lawsuit from the legal non-profit ClientEarth against the PGE subsidiary running the plant, culminated in the company’s decision to shut it down by 2036 and close the last coal mine by 2038.

Cutting emissions is a condition for Poland receiving 3.85 billion euros ($4.16 billion) from the EU, the largest slice from the bloc’s 17.5-billion-euro Just Transition Fund.

Environmentalists welcomed the decision to shut the plant, but Belchatow’s future hinges on whether it can transform its economy.

PGE did not respond to requests for comment. It said in 2021 it was “fully aware of the societal and economic effects” of the closure and the need to secure a future for employees and residents, adding that it would spend nearly 1.15 billion euros on investments, with a focus on clean energy.

But workers feel they have been kept in the dark.

“This whole transformation is a bit like yeti,” said Krzystof. “We’ve heard about it, but no one’s seen it.”

“Green collar” jobs
The transition is set to be costly and complex, and there is little time to adapt, said researchers at the Polish Green Network, a group of environmental NGOs.

Local authorities are banking on green investments that could generate up to six times more “green collar” jobs than the employment in the current lignite complex, according to research from Instrat, a Warsaw-based think tank.

“It goes without saying that we have to move in the direction of renewables,” said Arkadiusz Rozniatowski, a city councillor.

Using existing energy grid infrastructure around the plant, PGE aims to develop solar and wind farms.

But most projects are still in their early stages, and very few jobs have yet been created, with 606 people employed in the company’s renewable sector across the whole of Poland in 2022, out of a total workforce of 28,000.

The Solidarnosc trade union at the Belchatow mine said it retrained employees in welding, machine operation and electrics over the past three years – in collaboration with an outside training company and with the support of EU funding.

“I feel like as a union, we’ve been more proactive,” said Szymon Mozdzen, a Solidarnosc representative at Belchatow.

Poland is looking to nuclear power to help plug the energy gap left by coal, with a Polish government decision on a new plant expected in 2025, but Belchatow would make an unlikely location due to the lack of local water bodies for cooling.

Leave no one behind?
At a restaurant where plant workers celebrate their retirement, Robert Sykula tucks into a slice of cheesecake and thinks of his own last day in four years’ time.

When the last pit closes in 2038, 73% of the current workforce will be entitled to their retirement pension, according to research from Instrat.

“This is no longer a young city,” Sykula said.

Many of PGE’s 7,000 direct employees have a right to severance packages under a transition deal made between unions, the government and energy companies in 2022.

But the deal does not cover any financial compensation for contract workers, and this affects some 5,500 contractors in related sectors, like machine maintenance and transportation, Instrat said.

The closure could also hit women hard as they are often employed in the service sector, and already make up 61% of Belchatow city’s unemployed.

“(As a woman) in this town, unless you have a diploma to be a doctor or a nurse, you work in retail or restaurants,” said Ewa Krukiewicz, 30, who has been out of work for months.

Local authorities are trying to address this by opening up vocational training schemes helped by EU funding. Krukiewicz wants to retrain as a nurse but it wasn’t among the listed courses.

While for small business owners, such as beauty parlour owner Kamila Dorozinska, a future without the plant is hard to predict.

“Will people be able to afford a beautician or hairdresser?” when the plant closes, she asked.

A ghost town
Locals in Belchatow are worried that without new businesses the city could become a ghost town.

Councillor Rozniatowski said the town needs to establish industrial zones and boost rail connections to encourage large businesses to relocate.

Tourism could form part of the post-industrial face-lift, such as a new slag heap turned ski-slope, Kamiensk Mountain, where dumped mining material has created the highest artificial mountain in Poland at 395m (1295.93 ft).

But all efforts to make Belchatow more attractive for businesses will be for nought if it cannot persuade young people they have a future in the city, said local councillors.

Many young people appear to have seen the writing on the wall for Belchatow. A 2019 survey said only a third of 16- to 19-year-olds planned to stay in the city after their studies.

“People are worried about the transformation, and nobody took responsibility,” said Izabela Warwas, a professor at Lodz University.

She believes that led many people in Belchatow to vote for Patryk Marjan in local elections this year, making him the first far-right candidate from the populist Konfederacja party to become a city mayor in Poland.

Marjan said the city should not be “sacrificed on the altar of the Green Deal”.

Krukiewicz voted for Marjan. As the daughter of a power plant worker, she feels forgotten by the clean energy transition.

“People don’t care if (the city) is green,” she said.

Belchatow could be left with only “churches and kebab shops” by the time the plant and mines close, Krukiewicz quipped.