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Author ORCID Identifier

Katarzyna Widera: 0000-0003-0651-8049

Abstract

The topic of the article is the carbon footprint of coal as a primary source of energy. In light of climate change and the energy transition in the European Union, it is increasingly important to analyse the carbon footprint of individual economic sectors. The aim of this review article is to present an analysis of the carbon footprint of the hard coal sector in Poland against the background of the EU’s climate neutrality policy. The paper reviews EU strategic documents, such as the European Green Deal, the ”Fit for 55” package, and the REPowerEU and Clean Industrial Deal initiatives, in terms of their impact on the functioning of the coal sector. It also presents a methodology for calculating the carbon footprint in terms of life cycle assessment (LCA), taking into account different scopes of greenhouse gas emissions according to the GHG Protocol. The article uses databases from the Instrat Foundation, Eurelectric – the Association of the Power Industry, the Polish Geological Institute, the Energy Market Agency, Ember – Electricity Data Explorer and the National Centre for Emissions Management. Using the latest available data from 2018 to 2024, the paper analyses changes in Poland’s and the EU’s energy mix and highlights the importance of the coal sector’s transition in the context of decarbonisation. The challenges associated with mine closures, the social transformation of mining regions and the future of energy security were also discussed. The article provides a starting point for further detailed comparative analyses of the carbon footprint of various energy sources in Poland and the European Union

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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