Snapshot of the energy sector in Poland

In recent years, Poland has experienced a significant decline in the share of coal in pow-er generation, accompanied by substantial growth in renewable energy. Of course, this shift brings new challenges not only for investors developing renewable energy projects but also for power system operators, due to the commissioning of numerous weather-dependent installations that are, as a result, unstable energy sources.

Coal's share of electricity generation fell to about 56 % in 2024 and further declined to 45.2 % in Q2 2025, confirming a clear downward trend. At the same time, the im-portance of renewable energy sources is increasing, with their share of electricity genera-tion in Poland reaching approximately 29 %, although their development continues to be hampered by regulatory barriers. Participants in the energy sector are also awaiting the completion of the government's work on key strategic documents guiding development.

Renewable energy

At the end of 2024, 33.6 GW of renewable energy sources were installed, an increase of 5.2 GW (+18.3 %) compared to 2023. The incremental share of renewables in Poland's electricity mix is unevenly distributed among technologies. Most of the new capacity in-stalled last year was photovoltaic – mainly due to prosumer activity and larger PV power plants. What is missing, however, is such dynamic growth in onshore wind power capaci-ty. As of July 2025, Poland has already reached 23.3 GW of installed photovoltaic ca-pacity (currently the largest PV farm in Poland has a capacity of 204 MW) and 10.3 GW in wind farms.

Due to the rapid development of renewable energy in Poland, the transmission system operator is increasingly being forced to limit the operation of RES installations. It is worth noting that the forced curtailment of electricity production by the transmission sys-tem operator (PSE) has so far been implemented only for balance reasons – i.e. due to excessive electricity production relative to consumption, storage and export capacity – rather than for grid-related reasons. Restricting the operation of sources is aimed at pre-venting the loss of regulatory capacity of the national power system and, consequently, the deterioration of grid security and stability parameters. The scale of RES redispatch in Poland clearly shows that the power system is not keeping up with the pace of renewable energy development. In all of 2024, the total volume of power output curtailments from RES installations was 731.4 GWh. By September 2025, the volume of power output cur-tailments from RES installations was already 1,131.5 GWh.

When analysing the renewable energy sector in Poland, the offshore sector cannot be overlooked. Polish offshore projects with a total capacity of approximately 8.4 GW are currently being developed, including 5.9 GW constituting so-called phase I development projects and 2.5 GW in so-called phase II. Poland is entering the operational phase of offshore wind development. The first electricity volumes from the most advanced phase I projects should be generated as early as 2026.

Phase I offshore wind farm projects already have secured support in the form of the right to cover the negative balance (covering the difference between the market price of en-ergy and the established price covering the cost of electricity generation) based on the decision of the President of the Energy Regulatory Office. Phase II of the offshore wind farm support system envisages holding auctions in 2025 (covering capacity of 4 GW), 2027 (4 GW), 2029 (2 GW) and 2031 (2 GW). The auction is won by whoever offers the lowest price. The maximum support period is 25 years and covers no more than 100,000 operational hours of an offshore wind farm.

Energy storage facilities

Energy storage facilities are an important addition to an electricity system with a high saturation of weather-dependent RES sources. They make it possible to increase the po-tential for integrating RES into the system, by reducing the increasingly frequent phe-nomenon of non-market RES redispatch. Currently, energy storage facilities are imple-mented either as part of a PV farm or wind farm under development, or as stand-alone installations directly connected to the grid. The Polish government has announced the ac-cession of new regulations that, among other things, will allow the development of RES installations and energy storage facilities using the cable pooling mechanism (i.e. the use of a single grid connection for all developed facilities).

In Poland, we can see that the development of energy storage is gaining momentum, although we are still waiting for the first large-scale installations to come online. All the connection conditions issued in Poland for energy storage already amount to 73 GW of capacity. At this stage, it is difficult to predict how many energy storage projects will ul-timately be implemented. Nevertheless, the volume of issued connection conditions indi-cates significant potential for the development of the energy storage sector in Poland. On the other hand, since the sector is still in its early stages, there remains considerable uncertainty about potential revenue sources, which makes it difficult to finance new in-vestments. Investors are uncertain whether energy storage facilities should generate revenue through price arbitrage or by providing system services.

SMR development in Poland

In Poland, interest persists in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which are planned to be developed in parallel with a large-scale nuclear power plant project. The current regula-tions already appear to be sufficient for the development of SMR installations in Poland. However, the Ministry of Energy is working on key documents concerning the energy market, including the operation of SMRs within it. Both the Roadmap for Small Nuclear and the updated Polish Nuclear Energy Program are due to be submitted to the govern-ment by the end of 2025.

Currently, the most advanced SMR project in Poland is the Orlen Synthos Green Energy (OSGE) project to build a 300 MW reactor network, with plans to deploy BWRX-300 small nuclear reactors developed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. The construction of the first small nuclear reactors with a capacity of approximately 300 MW will require state budget assistance. OSGE has submitted a formal request to the Ministry of Energy to start the procedure for European Commission notification of state aid in the form of con-tracts for difference for OSGE's planned fleet of 14 BWRX-300 reactors.

Grzegorz Filipowicz | Partner | Schoenherr
T: +48 603 350 501 | E: gr.filipowicz@schoenherr.eu