On 21 November 2024, the first Polish National Workshop on Electricity in Energy Communities was organized as part of the Commence project. The event, hosted on the Zoom platform, brought together 40 participants, including representatives of local governments and existing energy communities.
Guidelines for establishing Energy Communities
The workshop was opened by Krzysztof Fal, Director of Program Development at WiseEuropa. He spoke about the project and presented the document developed as part of the project: “National Guidelines for Energy Communities in Poland”. Then, the audience members were invited to share their comments and remarks. After once they have been taken into account, the final version of the document will be prepared, which will serve as a guide for local government units that are interested in the establishment of an energy community/cluster.
The next presentation was given by Tomasz Chmiel, who represented the Interdisciplinary Department of Energy Analysis at the National Nuclear Research Centre. His presentation included proposed business models for Local Balancing Authorities (LBAs).
Barriers to the development of community energy
The second part of the workshop consisted of two panel discussions. The first one focused on the regulatory and economic environment for the development of community energy and hosted: Tomasz Chmiel, Marcin Jaczewski (Ministry of Climate and Environment) and Anna Witkowska (Ignacy Lukasiewicz Institute for Energy Policy). Marcin Jaczewski emphasised that although this solution was introduced on a complicated system, it worked, and there were more and more energy cooperatives in Poland. It is difficult to expect a revolution in terms of the planned legal changes, but the system will certainly improve gradually. However, community energy appears in many strategic documents, which shows its great importance.
At the discussion, the issue of net metering came up; Tomasz Chmiel considers it to be an obstacle to the development of energy communities, to which Anna Witkowska referred. When asked if she thought cluster representatives saw this as a problem, she admitted that was the reason for many of them to get forced to transform themselves into cooperatives. Another problem is the numerous changes in the law, and those responsible for maintaining energy communities have not kept up with them. Another speaker, Tomasz Chmiel, pointed out the need to establish so-called “power gatekeepers” (a concept that already exists in the legislation). The issue of fines was also raised, which, according to Anna Witkowska, should be very balanced, as not all communities may have the means to pay them.
The opinion of local governments was also heard in the discussion. Their representatives pointed out that “one of the biggest obstacles to the development of energy communities is the lack of legal regulations that at least provide a framework for the cluster agreement or how to organise the work. Energy communities are being talked about everywhere, but local government officials do not know how to lead them. While within the local government there are probably no problems with raising external funds for community development (…), the problem is how to account for energy within the cluster – a community cannot make money on the electricity it produces, and accounting for energy within units that are part of a cluster but operate under different tax identification numbers is problematical. In many cases, smaller municipalities do not have thriving municipal companies that can bear the burden of managing such communities – even if they have the appropriate licenses to manage energy, there is a lack of concrete facilities, especially in terms of workforce.”
Experience of existing clusters and communities
The second panel, devoted to the experience of clusters and municipalities themselves in establishing such a form of activity, featured Rafał Czaja ( Professor Krzysztof Żmijewski Association for Efficiency), Joanna Tokarczuk (Zklaster) and Tomasz Drzał (National Chamber of Energy Clusters). Rafał Czaja, representing cooperatives, noted that until two years ago there were only two entities in this category in Poland. The number of cooperatives has increased as a result of two legislative acts published since then. Tomasz Drzał, speaking on behalf of the clusters, emphasized that the government, unfortunately, instead of supporting tasks focused on entities (energy companies), which does not create favourable conditions for the development of community energy.
Joanna Tokarczuk emphasised that Zklaster has been one of the first clusters in Poland, as it is not only a business entity, but also plays an educational role in changing the awareness of citizens. Another benefit of clusters for local communities is, obviously, lower energy costs. In this part of the workshop, a lot of attention was paid to the lack of human resources for energy community maintenance activities (e.g. reporting to the Energy Regulatory Office). There will not always be people who are familiar with the subject and willing to devote their private time to it. This is especially a problem at the beginning of an entity, when the primary task is to generate at least enough energy to fund the work of those involved. As one audience member pointed out, “the way to ensure that the human resources of energy communities are fed is to second an employee – legally up to three months a year (…). In this case, we also get away from the cost of personnel, which is an obstacle at the beginning of the creation of cooperatives”.
The upcoming workshops of the Commence project in Poland, as well as in the other partner countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary), are scheduled for the early months of 2025. These sessions will focus on thermal energy within energy communities.
