“Poland plans gigantic investments in the energy sector” reads the headline of an article by foreign correspondent Gabriele Lesser.
At the outset, we learn that such an ambitious modernization of the energy infrastructure was made possible by the change in government, which “unlocked funds from the Recovery Fund that had previously been blocked.”
“The national populists from the Law and Justice (PiS) party, who earlier governed the country for eight years, reorganized Poland’s legal system to their own advantage. They repeatedly described EU law as ‘unconstitutional’ and often ignored rulings by the European Court of Justice. Eventually, Brussels lost patience, and the EU halted the large-scale flow of money to Poland,” Lesser writes bluntly.
The author admits that Tusk “inherited certain investments from the PiS government that can no longer be reversed.” She lists two: “in addition to the large airport between Warsaw and Łódź, there is also the move into nuclear energy.”
Regarding the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Choczewo, the article states:
“The investor Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) received approval for public funding equivalent to 14.5 billion euros. However, that amounts to barely one-third of the investment’s total estimated cost of 47 billion euros.”
Despite agreements between PEJ and the American contractor, TAZ reports that “the Westinghouse consortium, which is supposed to supply the AP1000 reactor and build it together with the American company Bechtel, has never shown genuine interest in this project.”
And that’s not all. Lesser speculates that “the private expansion of photovoltaic systems and the planned offshore wind farms may render the costly construction of nuclear power plants unnecessary.”
“No government politician admits this openly, but in a few years it will become clearer how expensive nuclear energy is compared to green energy from wind and solar,” the article concludes.