The installation that emits the most gases causing climate change in the entire European Union is 170 kilometers from Warsaw, in central Poland.
Owned by the company Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), it is the Belchatow coal-fired power plant, which alone generates 33 million tons of CO₂ per year, as much as that of an entire country like Denmark.
When approaching this gigantic Polish power station, its two enormous 300-meter-high chimneys and its seven large cooling towers attract attention.
Then, already inside the enclosure, the mountains of coal that reach the plant through long conveyor belts stand out from two nearby open-pit mines, one about to run out and another that is estimated to still have ore for 17 more years.
"We have a license that allows us to exploit coal until 2038," explains Sandra Apanasionek, spokesperson for the Belchatow power plant, who assures that this is the year they estimate for the end of the use of this mineral in Poland, although not yet there is no date decided in this country.
POLAND
Warsaw
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Belchatow
Conveyor belts
mineral
Coal mines
open sky
active
5 km
The power plant has been operating since 1988 and has an output of 5,102 megawatts.
The main fuel is lignite and it is the largest in Europe of its kind.
Also in carbon dioxide emission: 32.7 million tons in 2019.
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Seven towers of
refrigeration
300 m
In 2012, unit number 13 was built, with a capacity of 858 MW and an efficiency of 42%.
12 units of 320 MW each, which were upgraded to between 370 and 394 MW.
The current efficiency is 38%.
Source: PGE, NS Energy and OSM.
CATALAN NACHO / EL PAÍS
POLAND
Warsaw
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Belchatow
Conveyor belts
mineral
Coal mines
open sky
active
5 km
The power plant has been operating since 1988 and has an output of 5,102 megawatts.
The main fuel is lignite and it is the largest in Europe of its kind.
Also in carbon dioxide emission: 32.7 million tons in 2019.
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Seven towers of
refrigeration
300 m
In 2012, unit number 13 was built, with a capacity of 858 MW and an efficiency of 42%.
12 units of 320 MW each, which were upgraded to between 370 and 394 MW.
The current efficiency is 38%.
Source: PGE, NS Energy and OSM.
CATALAN NACHO / EL PAÍS
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Ribbons
conveyors
mineral
Nine kilometers
to the central
20 kilometers
to the central
Coal mines
open sky
active
POLAND
Warsaw
Belchatow
5 km
The power plant has been operating since 1988 and has an output of 5,102 megawatts.
The main fuel is lignite and it is the largest in Europe of its kind.
Also in carbon dioxide emission: 32.7 million tons in 2019.
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Seven towers of
refrigeration
300 m
In 2012, unit number 13 was built, with a capacity of 858 MW and an efficiency of 42%.
12 units of 320 MW each, which were upgraded to between 370 and 394 MW.
The current efficiency is 38%.
Source: PGE, NS Energy and OSM.
CATALAN NACHO / EL PAÍS
POLAND
Warsaw
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Ribbons
conveyors
mineral
Belchatow
Mine
abandoned
Nine kilometers
to the central
20 kilometers
to the central
Coal mines
open sky
active
5 km
The power plant has been operating since 1988 and has an output of 5,102 megawatts.
The main fuel is lignite and it is the largest in Europe of its kind.
Also in carbon dioxide emission: 32.7 million tons in 2019.
Electric power plant
by Belchatow
Seven towers of
refrigeration
300 m
In 2012, unit number 13 was built, with a capacity of 858 MW and an efficiency of 42%.
12 units of 320 MW each, which were upgraded to between 370 and 394 MW.
The current efficiency is 38%.
Source: PGE, NS Energy and OSM.
CATALAN NACHO / EL PAÍS
A total of 20 large companies are responsible for one third (33%) of the greenhouse gas emissions produced in Europe.
This is revealed by the data for the last year in which companies have operated at full speed, 2019, and which allows us to see the detail of each industry in the European Union.
The German energy giant RWE, the Swedish Vettenfall and the company that owns the Polish plant Belchatow (PGE) occupy the first positions of a ranking in which the steelmaker ArcelorMittal or the Spanish Endesa and its Italian parent, Enel also appear.
Giant excavator that extracts the coal that is then burned in Belchatow, in an open pit mine located next to the plant.
BELCHATOW / PGE
The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) obliges companies operating on the continent to report the greenhouse gases they generate on an annual basis.
Each establishment has to comply with an emission quota and reduce them or buy emission rights if it needs to emit more.
This allows monitoring, thanks to the databases that the European Commission publishes, how much each factory and each company has emitted.
EL PAÍS, in collaboration with the SONAR EUROPE project media, has rebuilt the property of each of the 'large emitters', establishments that produce more than 70% of the emissions of each country, most of them dedicated to the production of Energy.
The burning of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil or gas) accounts for 6 out of 10 tonnes of CO₂ that are emitted in Europe annually.
Airlines, boosted by the increase in travelers in recent years (until the outbreak of the pandemic), are the fifth most polluting industry in the EU.
Knowing this information in detail is useful to see what large companies are doing to meet the reduction targets, as the EU has committed to cut its emissions by 55% by 2030 (compared to the 1990 level).
In 2019, European emissions maintained their downward trend, with a decrease of 9.1% compared to the previous year.
Since the beginning of the 90s, 23% have done so, a rate that, as the European Commission warned, is too slow to be able to achieve the planned objective.
The positive aspect is that the greatest reduction in emissions occurs in the sector that emits the most, that of fossil fuel burning plants (13% less in the last year).
Endesa, the only Spanish one that appears among the 20 most polluting, stands out for the decarbonisation carried out with respect to the previous year, when it emitted 46% more and was among the 10 greatest pollutants.
Among the other large companies based in Spain, Naturgy reduced them by 32%, while Iberdrola increased them by 18%.
Cemex, ArcelorMittal and the oil companies Cepsa and Repsol also stand out, both with an increase in emissions in the last year.
The most polluting plants in Europe
Much of the downward trend at the European level is due to data from the 30 facilities that produce the most greenhouse gases.
From large power plants to oil refineries, these 30 plants are responsible for approximately 20% of the emissions recorded in 2019. The one that emitted the most was the gigantic Belchatow plant, which has been leading the list of the most polluting for several years.
Here the energy transition is going at a different pace.
'' It is a change that takes time because Poland has a difficult climate without enough sunny days.
At the moment, conventional energy provides security for 11 million Polish homes, '' says Apanasionek, a spokesperson for this power plant that has been operating for 39 years in Poland, one of the European countries most dependent on coal.
Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk, an energy expert at the Forum Energii institute, argues that getting Belchatow's more than 5,000 MW of power from renewable sources alone is an unaffordable challenge for the current Polish situation.
As he points out, both the Government of this country and the PGE company are considering the possibility of complementing this coal installation with nuclear energy and gas.
Anna Meres, from Greenpeace, assures that Poland has not set a specific date to definitively abandon coal, a fact that is detrimental to the mining areas that see the Just Transition Funds blocked.
"In order to avoid the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times, Poland must stop coal by 2030 ′ at the latest," he adds.
According to Eurostat data, Poland did not fulfill its commitment to incorporate 15% of renewable sources in the energy mix in gross final consumption by 2020. Meres explains that this objective is not met due to the scarce presence of regulations that can promote these technologies clean to generate energy.
For its part, the owner of Belchatow, PGE, tries to reinvent itself given the increasingly high costs of coal: on the one hand, in 2034 it expects to have 340 hectares for the development of wind and photovoltaic parks;
on the other, its strategy no longer contemplates the construction of a large open-pit mine in Zloczew - 50 kilometers from the plant -, as it foresaw in 2016. Apanasionek also says that after an investment of 9,000 million zloty euros), the installation has managed to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions by 93%, nitrogen compounds by 55% and suspended particles by 98%.
“We are afraid that PGE will abandon its plans and leave us stranded.
The people of the city are seduced by the prosperity that coal has brought to other regions of Poland, ”says Dominik Drzazga, Mayor of the city of Zloczew.
In Belchatow, Jolanta (not her real name) is also affected: '' My son started working at the plant this year.
If the mine does not continue, we will be left with nothing ”, he laments.
Some like Ryszard Frys, from the Solidarnosc union, still cling to the idea of opening a new open pit mine to extend the activity of the plant.
Although, just in case, this also claims that 25% of workers have a guaranteed job when renewables burst into the power plant.
Centrals in Germany and Asturias
On the list of the most polluting physical facilities, there are five large plants located in eastern and western Germany, which emit 25% of the country's greenhouse gases.
And in Spain, the Aboño thermal power plant, in Asturias, between the municipalities of Gijón and Carreño.
It is managed by EDP (the largest electricity group in Portugal) and represents 4% of all emissions declared by Spain in 2019.
The nationality of these facilities places Germany and Poland as the countries that produced the most polluting gases in 2019. The former is the country with the largest population on the continent and also the one that offers the most indirect subsidies (in the form of subsidies and tax cuts) to companies. polluting companies to maintain their activity.
Poland is the sixth in population and the largest producer of coal in the EU: 80% of its energy depends on this material.
Spain is the fifth country that emits the most and its decrease in the last year has been 13%, driven mainly by the reduction in the burning of fossil fuels, 20% less.
But to achieve the objectives, these percentages of 'decarbonisation' have to reach other sectors, explains Fernando Prieto, specialist at the Sustainability Observatory: "The transport sector and certain industrial sectors such as oil are probably the main obstacle," he details.
"There is still no technology of mass use for transport that does not need to use oil (the electric car, with its recharging infrastructures and a very high requirement of materials, will take longer to expand)."
The weight of aviation
A sector that takes a separate account is aviation.
As a whole, the activities of airlines based in European countries represent the sixth most polluting group and their emissions as a whole have increased by 50% since 2012. They represent 4% of the total greenhouse gases in the old continent, more than the production of basic chemicals or the production of aluminum.
The two best-known low-cost airlines, Ryanair and EasyJet, issued the most throughout the year.
If the Irish company were compared to the physical facilities mentioned above, its emissions would rank it as the ninth highest emitter.
Iberia (including Iberia Express) occupies half of the table.
The total emissions of the sector far exceeded the limit established for 2019. Therefore, the operators have had to buy emission credits from the rest of the sectors in order to meet their objectives.
A central with a ski resort
Apart from millions of tons of CO₂, the giant Belchatow plant has also generated a mountain.
This is Kamensk, which at 407 meters above sea level is the highest elevation in this central part of Poland.
A mountain built with 1,500 million cubic meters of earth extracted in the exploitation of open-cast coal mines.
The company that owns the plant planted 40 million trees there and turned it into an attraction.
In winter, the place serves as a ski resort, while in the summer it offers 40 kilometers of cycling routes.
A second twin mountain will house a photovoltaic park in the future.
/ Photo courtesy of PGE
This article is part of
SONAR EUROPE
, a project by Gazeta Wyborcza, Le Figaro, Le Sori and EL PAÍS to tell Europe through data.
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