For the first time since taking office a few weeks ago, Poland’s new President Karol Nawrocki used his veto power to block a bill passed by Parliament—and it was a green energy bill easing rules for building onshore wind farms but bundling it with a freeze on energy prices.
“This is the first bill which I’ve decided to veto,” Nawrocki said on Thursday, as carried by Bloomberg.
“It was a kind of blackmail by the parliamentary majority,” the president added.
The president and his allies of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party have been opposing the reform agenda of the centrist government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The bill Nawrocki vetoed would have made onshore wind installations easier and included incentives for municipalities to expand renewable energy capacity. The draft legislation would have reduced the required distance of wind farms from residential areas. It also contained a provision that would have frozen energy prices in Poland by the end of the year.
Nawrocki endorses a freeze on energy prices, but objected to the freeze being bundled into a bill easing onshore wind farm development.
The president vowed to propose a new bill with the price freeze, but omitting the wind power references.
“Either ill will or the president’s appalling incompetence. Possibly both. His veto means more expensive electricity for all Poles — today and in the future,” the PM Tusk wrote on X in response to the president’s veto.
Poland’s biggest source of electricity is coal, although the share has dropped from 70% in 2022 to 54% in 2024, according to data by clean energy think tank Ember. Wind is Poland’s biggest source of clean electricity, but fossil fuels, predominantly coal, still accounted for 70% of electricity output last year.
Poland looks to have at least 50% of its electricity coming from renewable sources by the end of the decade.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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