At the end of February, Warsaw, the capital of Poland ranked as the second-worst city on the planet in terms of air quality, just after Dhaka in Bangladesh but ahead of Calcutta in India.
This was not the first time this winter that Warsaw has recorded a level of pollution that seriously exceeds the World Health Organization norms. On the 23th of February 2021, the Polish capital exceeded the normal levels of PM 2.5 by 364% and PM 10 by 232% which placed it in the second position on the list of the world’s worst polluted cities according to the World Air Quality Ranking. Another Polish city, Wrocław, also occupied a very high sixth position that day.
Statistics also show that this is not an exception with many Polish cities and towns having recorded very high levels of air pollution this winter. Poland has been struggling with some of the worst air quality in Europe for many years. The European Commission estimates that the toxic mix that Poles breathe kills about 50,000 every year. The problem is complex and stems from a combination of many factors.
The Polish economy is still highly coal-reliant, especially in terms of heating. Over 72% of the heating in Poland is generated by coal power plants. At the same time, at the private individual and municipal buildings, about 47% of heat is generated by coal-burning, 31% comes from liquid gas, and 19.6% from biomass and other fuels. While coal burning causes pollution by definition, the situation is worsened by the poor quality of this fossil fuel.
Thus, air pollution is a result of burning low-quality coal or other fuel types in cheap and poor-quality furnaces, thus preventing low emission rates. Poles still use 3 to 3.5 million furnaces of this type in both private and municipal buildings, a number similar to those affected by energy poverty which is assessed to be between 3 and 3.5 million. This means that 10% of Polish households struggle with energy poverty and those who cannot afford to buy good quality fuel or furnaces burn whatever they can to heat their homes.
Very often Poles do not use coal at all but burn rubbish or old furniture which generates toxic air.
Although the government has launched a special program, “Czyste Powietrze” (Clean Air), which aims to encourage people to upgrade their furnaces to more energy-efficient and ecological models by offering them subsidies, this has not brought any significant revolution and its implementation is slow. The program is burdened with unnecessary bureaucracy which deters many people from applying. The level of subsidy depends on the household’s income which makes some people ineligible even though they do not have a high level of income. The program was launched in 2018. However, because of the complicated bureaucracy, it was re-launched in 2020. At the end of last year, 200,000 households had applied for funding.
The other factor that causes poor air quality in Poland is the low awareness among society. According to a survey carried out by the Polish Economic Institute, only 40% of Poles know that the air they breathe is polluted while every two out three people are unaware that air pollution comes mostly from furnaces in private households and therefore they do not link their own behavior and heating choices with air quality.
