Poland's coal power transition is advancing far faster than commonly assumed. Coal accounted for 72.5% of Poland's electricity generation in 2021, before slipping to 52.7% in 2025, with renewables making up 31.4% of output, according to national power statistics.

Coal fell below half of power generation across five separate months, and June marked the first month where renewables out-generated coal nationwide.

The transition cannot be simplified to a one-to-one displacement of coal by renewables; natural gas is also gaining ground. In both 2024 and 2025, gas posted the largest share gain in power output.

For 2025, Poland recorded 24.4 TWh of gas-fired generation, compared with 23.8 TWh from onshore wind and 20.3 TWh from solar. While Poland is decarbonizing at a brisk clip, its generation mix is being reshaped by renewables plus gas rather than fully zero-carbon substitution.

A key unresolved issue lies not in the falling volume of coal-fired generation, but in Poland's continued financial support for high-emitting coal capacity to preserve system security.

A critical distinction exists between energy output and capacity adequacy. Annual generation volumes are measured in MWh or TWh. Security of supply hinges on sufficient dependable MW available during stress conditions: peak demand, low wind output, no solar irradiation, constrained cross-border imports or compound system shocks.

A coal-fired plant may operate fewer hours annually, lose merchant market share and become uneconomic as an energy producer, yet still be valued as system backstop insurance.

Poland's capacity market lays this trade-off bare. A supplementary capacity market auction held in September 2025 for the 2026 delivery year awarded 7.58 GW of capacity obligations. Under a special EU-approved derogation, power plants emitting above 550 kilograms of CO2/MWh were eligible to take part. Comparable auctions are scheduled for 2027 and 2028, with the European derogation set to expire at end-2028.

This policy duality is not inherently contradictory. Renewables have pushed coal further down the merit order more rapidly than supporting power system infrastructure can fully replicate coal's reliability functions. Energy transition is outpacing capacity adequacy transition.

Tensions are already visible in operational data. Renewable output expanded substantially in 2025, leading Poland to curtail 1.4 TWh of clean power, double the 2024 volume, driven primarily by balancing constraints rather than physical grid congestion. During periods of strong solar output, low-cost power exceeds the absorption capability of Poland's relatively inflexible network. At other times, coal-fired units remain on standby.

Additional solar build-out alone cannot resolve both sets of challenges. Poland needs expanded transmission links, cross-border interconnections, battery storage, demand-side flexibility, district heating infrastructure and smart electric vehicle charging to shift power across time zones and geographies. Its legacy coal fleet once performed nearly all system functions. Phasing it out requires building an integrated web of generation assets, grids, storage and responsive loads.

New low-carbon capacity is no longer a purely theoretical prospect. Poland's maiden offshore wind facility, Baltic Power, fed electricity to the grid in July 2026. Upon full commissioning, its 1.2 GW capacity is expected to yield roughly 4 TWh per annum, equivalent to around 3% of Poland's current electricity demand.

The near-term trajectory is well-defined. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects Polish renewable generation will expand by roughly 13% per year through 2030, overtake coal on an annual basis in 2028 and reach approximately 53% of total power output by 2030. Coal-fired generation is forecast to contract by around 11% annually, while gas-fired output keeps rising.

Removing coal from the generation mix is the first milestone. Removing coal from the reliability-oriented power system represents the harder second phase of transition.