Tomorrow, Poland’s biggest climate trial will begin with a court hearing in the Regional Court in Łódź. Greenpeace Poland has sued the biggest CO2 emitter in the country, PGE GiEK, a company belonging to PGE group – an owner of i.a. coal power plants and coal mines in Bełchatów and Turów. The organisation demands the reduction of the company’s greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal to net zero by 2030. The lawsuit is based on Article 323 of the Polish Environmental Protection Law.
Greenpeace has been campaigning for years for climate protection and just energy transition. As early as the year 2018, Greenpeace informed that it will take legal action against PGE if the company fails to take action to reduce emissions from its coal power plants. Yet the company did not put forward any plan to phase out coal. Therefore in (miesiąc rok) Greenpeace filed a lawsuit against the PGE GiEK that concentrates the group’s coal assets. The company’s response to the lawsuit recalled anti-scientific opinions denying human impact on the worsening climate crisis and its contribution to the rise in the average global temperature of the planet. Environmentalists engaged in the mediation with the company, ordered by the court, but without positive results. results.
– Greenhouse gas emissions caused by PGE GiEK are fueling the climate crisis. CEO of PGE – Wojciech Dąbrowski likes empty talk about the company’s pursuit of climate neutrality, but he does not back it up with action. In 2021, emissions of the PGE group increased by 19 per cent compared to the previous year. This is far from the green PR thatPGE pursuits. This is why we decided to sue the owner of some of the biggest climate destroying coal plants in the EU such as . Bełchatów and Turów plants. We demand climate justice. Similar cases in the world have already found their positive endings in the European courts. A good example would be the Netherlands, where a court ordered Shell to drastically cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. – said Piotr Wójcik, energy market analyst at Greenpeace Poland.
Greenpeace’s lawsuit is based on the provision of the Polish law which states that anyone who is threatened with damage by impacting the environment may request the responsible entity to restore the legal condition. Environmentalists point out that the climate crisis is a thoroughly studied phenomenon, and science has no doubt that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels directly contribute to its worsening. PGE GiEK is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in Poland. Its emissions are comparable to those of some entire European countries, such as Portugal, Hungary or Sweden.
– Climate lawsuits are slowly becoming an important strategy in the fight against the climate crisis. The public has the right to demand that the greenhouse gas emitter limit their harmful activities, and the first judgments are being passed before courts all over the world obliging them to significantly reduce their negative impact on the climate. The lawsuit against PGE GiEK is one of the first climate cases in Poland – said Miłosz Jakubowski, Legal Counsel from Frank Bold law firm, representing Greenpeace in the case against PGE GiEK.
– We demand that PGE GiEK end the emission of greenhouse gases from burning coal by 2030. This ask comes from the current scientific knowledge and is based on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to them, in order to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis, we must move away from coal by 2030 – Piotr Wójcik adds.