BBI Zeneris

Legal regulations concerning renewable energy in the EU and in Poland

•    European Union Law;
•    Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997;
•    Polish energy policy up to 2025;
•    Strategy for the Development of Renewable Energy –;
•    Concession procedure;
•    Acts of Polish law;
•    Secondary legislation in Polish law.
 
European Union law

Below you will find the most important regulations of the community energy law in the scope of generation of energy from renewable resources. It should be emphasized that European directives are legally binding on the member states and need to be implemented in national laws.

Directive 2004/8/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004 on the promotion of cogeneration based on a useful heat demand in the internal energy market and amending directive 92/42/EEC (OJ L 52, item 50). The Directive provides framework for the promotion and development of highly efficient combined power and heat plants based on the useful heat demand and primary energy savings in the internal energy market. The Directive defines the method for calculating cogeneration effectiveness and issues related with guarantees of origin of electric energy from highly efficient combined heat and power plants. The objective of the draft act amending the Energy Law and the Environmental Protection Law is to implement the above Directive.

Directive 2001/77/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 September 2001 on the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal energy market (OJ L 283 of 27 October 2001). The objective of the Directive is to promote the growth of the share of renewable energy sources in the production of electricity in the internal energy market. The Directive includes in particular regulations related with guarantees of origin of electricity produced from renewable resources of energy. The said Directive is implemented in the Polish legislation by the Energy Law.

Polish law

Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997

Pursuant to article 5 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, Poland guided by the principle of sustainable development, ensures protection of environment and pursuant to article 74 of the constitution, a duty to protect environment is imposed, among others, on government authorities who by their policy should ensure ecological safety to the present and future generations (the principle of sustainable development). Protection of air against pollution is the most spectacular element of environmental protection because the pollutants affect not only the health of local communities and workers, but due to their capacity to spread over long distances, their range goes beyond regions, covers the whole country or several countries, but also have impact on climate changes and destruction of the ozone layer (protecting people and all living organisms).

Polish energy policy up to 2025

In a document issued by the Council of Ministers on 4 January 2005 – Energy Policy of Poland up to 2025, which defines the directions for the development of Polish power industry, the promotion of renewable sources of energy has been recognized as one of the most important principles of the energy policy.

The policy will be pursued through, among other, the following actions:

1. Maintaining stable mechanisms to promote the use of renewable sources of energy – it is anticipated that the mechanisms supporting development of renewable energy will be applied throughout year 2025. One of the key issues is to ensure that the mechanisms are stable and to create conditions for safe investments in renewable sources of energy. It is also anticipated that the applied promotion mechanisms will be continuously monitored and possibly improved. Any required changes to the mechanisms will be announced well in advance to guarantee stable investing conditions.
   
2. Using biomass for the production of electrical energy and heat –in Poland, biomass based technologies will remain the main direction for the development of renewable sources of energy. The use of biomass for power industry purposes should not result in shortages of timber in the timber, paper and cellulose industry, as well as board and other timber-derivative industries. The use of biomass will have a significant positive effect on the improvement of farming and forestry and should become an important element of agricultural policy. It is assumed that biomass for such purposes will be mainly acquired from energy crops. It is further assumed that a wide range of biofuels contained in various industrial and municipal waste also from outside the plant and animal production will be effectively used, which will contribute to a dynamic growth of local enterprises. Any intensive production of energy crops must however ensure that the required extensive fertilization does not cause deterioration of environmental conditions (water, soil).

Renewable energy strategy

Renewable energy strategy is a document drawn up by the Ministry of Environment, which emphasizes the importance of issues related with the production of energy from renewable resources. It describes specific actions to be taken by the government to meet the accession requirements, which shall take form of financing and prioritizing investments in renewable sources of energy as especially important from the point of view of the energy and ecological safety of the State.
Moreover, it is suggested that any actions aimed at doubling the share of renewable energy in the country fuel and energy balance by 2020 against 2010 and reaching the value of 14% should be undertaken. This will be possible only with exceptionally high investments, on an unprecedented scale of several billion EUR.

Laws

The most important acts of law regulating the power industry, waste and environmental protection issues are listed below.

Act of 10 April 1997 The Energy Law (consolidated text in Official Journal of 2003 No. 153, item 1504 – hereinafter referred to as the Energy Law) as amended. The Energy Law includes regulations concerning the production and trading in energy, including energy from renewable energy sources, issue of concessions, calculation of tariffs, as well as the duty to obtain and present for remittance renewable energy certificates and the duty to purchase energy from cogeneration technologies. The Law also regulates the competencies of the President of the Energy Regulatory Office (Hereinafter referred to as the President of URE) within the above capacities.
Act of 27 April 2001 on Environmental Protection and Act of 27 April 2001 on waste.
 
Regulations

Below you will find selected secondary legislation to the Energy Law that is of key importance for the production of energy from renewable sources.

Regulation of the Minister of Economy and Labor of 31 August 2005 on the announcement of report determining objectives for the share of electric energy produced from renewable sources of energy located in the territory of the Republic of Poland, in domestic consumption of electricity in the years 2005-2014 (Official Journal No. 53, item 731). The Regulation was issued to implement the provisions of the Energy Law requiring to announce a report, accepted by the Council of Ministers, determining the objectives for the share of electric energy produced from renewable energy sources located in the territory of the Republic of Poland, in domestic consumption of electricity within the next ten years. The report determines, among other things, quantitative targets in the European Union and individual member states for the share of electrical energy from renewable resources, indicatory objectives for the production of electrical energy from renewable resources for the years 2005-2014, the expected share structure of individual types of renewable energy, including biomass and biofuels, enabling to attain the adopted values of the indicatory objectives, as well as means to achieve the state indicatory objective in the following years

Regulation of the Minister of Economy of 19 December 2005 on detailed scope of duty to obtain and present for remittance certificates of origin, to pay the substitute payment and to purchase electrical energy and heat produced from renewable sources of energy (hereinafter referred to as the Regulation on detailed scope of duty to obtain and present for remittance certificates of origin, to pay the substitute payment and to purchase electric energy and heat produced from renewable sources of energy). The act regulates detailed issues related with the process of obtaining and remitting certificates of origin, paying the substitute payment and purchasing energy produced from renewable sources.

Regulation of the Minister of Economy and Labor of 9 December 2004 on detailed scope of duty to purchase electric energy produced in cogeneration with heat (Official Journal No. 267, item 2657). The act regulates the scope of duty to purchase electric energy produced by CHP (combined heat and power) plants, in particular the technical and technological parameters of the production of combined power and heat, the volume and method of calculating the share of electrical energy produced in combination with heat, including own sources, the energy provider is required to purchase. It also stipulates the method of considering the purchase costs of this energy in the calculation of prices for electrical energy, which are defined in the tariffs of energy providers involved in the production or trading in electrical energy.

Regulation of the Minister of Economy, Labor and Social Policy of 23 April 2004 on detailed principles of forming and calculating tariffs and billing in electric energy trading (Official Journal No. 105, item 1114 – hereinafter referred to as the Regulation on detailed principles of forming and calculating tariffs and billing in electrical energy trading). The Regulation determines, among other issues, the principles for forming and calculating tariffs in electrical energy trading with taking into account the costs of electrical energy production at CHP plants.

Regulation of the Minister of Economy of 26 September 2007 on the method of calculating data given in applications for certificates of cogeneration origin and detailed scope of duty to obtain and remit those certificates, to pay the substitute payment and to confirm data concerning the volume of electric energy produced at highly efficient CHP plants.

Regulation of the Minister of Economy of 21 March 2002 on requirements for the staging of waste thermal transformation process.

Regulation of the Council of Ministers of 9 November 2004 on determining the types of enterprises that may have a considerable impact on environment and detailed conditions related with classifying a project as requiring the Environmental Impact Report to be drawn.

Regulation of the Minister of Environment of 23 December 2004 on requirements concerning the emission measurement system.

Regulation of the Minister of Environment of 20 December 2005 on the standards of emissions from the plants.

Regulation of the Council of Ministers of 20 December 2005 on charges for the use of environment.

 

Municipal waste market in Poland

Pursuant to applicable regulations, a waste owner is required to handle waste in accordance with the waste management principles and environmental protection requirements. Article 7 paragraph 2 of the Waste Law reads that “A waste owner is required to subject waste to a recovery process and if due to technological reasons it is impossible or unjustified from ecological or economical point of view, waste should be neutralized according to environmental protection requirements and waste management plans. Waste that could not have been subjected to recovery process, should be neutralized so that only waste that could not have been neutralized for technological reasons or the neutralization of which has been unjustified from ecological or economical point of view, was disposed”. Consequently, waste recovery has priority over neutralization, and neutralization over disposal.
The possible risks of a project related with the availability of material should be referred to a “micro perspective”, i.e. local conditions affecting the availability of material and to a “macro perspective”.

The most important micro conditions include:

• Population and urbanization level;

• Waste generation index and its dynamics;

Population and urban development index

Due to cost determinants, the main flow of material (waste) for the designed installation most probably will be coming from the near vicinity of the Plant. The costs of transportation and the time of delivery and unloading – apart from the cost of receipt – are the main determinants of selecting a contractor the waste will be supplied to (i.e. contractor operating a recovery system, naturalization system or just disposal)  by operators involved in the collection and transportation of municipal waste. The regional determinant of the origin of waste is also regulated by the Act on waste, which in article 3 paragraph 3 says that waste should be subjected to recovery or neutralization processes on the territory of the province it has been generated in. Therefore the analysis of the material market should concern micro factors from the region of origin.

Waste generation index and its dynamics

The waste accumulation index per capita per annum has been assumed based on a review of previous waste market research made by the Institute of Ecology of Industrialized Areas in several administrative units of the Śląskie province, as well as data from the research and publications of OBREM5. And thus it has been assumed that in 2003, there was in total 25,510 [Mg] of municipal waste generated in all the zones of Jastrzębie, meaning that the accumulation index was 263 kg/per capita/year. At the same time it should be emphasized that additionally over 110kg per capita per annum is generated from municipal waste in social infrastructure units, i.e. schools, trade and craft establishments, hospitals etc., resulting, to put it simply, in a 1:2 proportion of the two sources of waste, i.e. ca. 30% of municipal waste is generated in the social infrastructure units and 70% in households.
On the base of the largest European studies on municipal waste carried out in the years 1970-2001 as part of the 5th Framework Program of the European Union, it is known that the discussed index and its dynamics in the countries of EU in 1998 was as follows:


 
Source: Study: Forecasting the change of volume and composition of municipal waste - Peter BEIGL, Stefan SALHOFER, Gudrun WASSERMANN Iwona MAĆKÓW, Marta SEBASTIAN, Ryszard SZPADT, 6th Waste Management Forum “Effectiveness of Waste Management”.
 
Macro factors determining the municipal waste generation index have been identified during empirical studies carried out from 1970 to 2001 as part of the 5th Framework Program of the EU and later described in quantitative models describing the observed regularities. Studies on the volume and morphology of generated waste have been carried out in all European capitals, cities over 500,000 of inhabitants and other major cities. In result of the studies there were two municipal waste volume forecasting models determined:

 

• City / country evolution model

• Household expense model.

 
The impact of the individual incomes of inhabitants and the national income on the volume of generated waste is obvious and well documented in numerous studies. In countries of higher GDP there is more waste generated per capita, but the unit volume of generated waste decreases with the increase of GDP when expressed in GDP.


Specialist waste management services

Pursuant to the act on waste, waste can be subjected to neutralization or recovery processes. According to the act, neutralization of waste means subjecting waste to biological, physical or chemical transformation processes specified in annex no. 6 to the Act (13 techniques listed) in order to bring it to a condition that no longer poses threat to life and health of people or to environment. Neutralization process is intended for waste, which has already had recoverable waste segregated. The most common neutralization techniques include disposal on neutral waste landfills, treatment in the soil and ground, surface retention (liquid waste), biological treatment (fermentation), physical and chemical treatment, and thermal transformation of waste.

Recovery includes all activities posing no threat to life and health of people and to the environment. It consists in using the whole or a part of waste or leads to recovery of substances, materials or energy and their usage, as specified in annex no. 5 to the Act (15 techniques listed). The Act on waste also defines the recovery of energy – understood as thermal transformation of waste in order to recover energy. A waste owner is required to subject waste to the recovery processes and only when the recovery is impossible due to technical reasons or is unjustifiable due to ecological or economic reasons, waste should be neutralized (article 7 of the Act). The most common recovery processes include use of waste as fuel or other energy generators, recycling or regeneration of organic substances, recycling or regeneration of metals, metal compounds and other non-organic materials, repeated refining of oil, distribution on the surface of soil for soil fertilization or improvement, and waste treatment for recovery purposes, including recycling.

Disposal is the main method of neutralization of municipal waste in the Śląskie province. The sites are responsible for a considerable part of emission of dioxins to the environment. Making geo-diaphragms, laying foil on the bottom of the sites or removing methane from the strata only slightly reduces the noxiousness and environmental hazard.
The majority of closed landfills has no protection against negative impact on the environment. Pursuant to EU Directives, disposal of waste is limited since 2002 (volume of bio-degradable fraction and waste of over 6300 MJ calorific value) and a complete ban on surface disposal is planned to be implemented (expected from 2010 - Directive 99/31/EC). It should be also emphasized that disposal will be gradually limited by the adoption of indexes, e.g. concerning the reduction of the volume of disposed bio-degradable fraction or a ban on disposal of waste with over 5% carbon content.

Pursuant to the Act on waste, recycling is a recovery process consisting in repeated processing of substances or materials contained in waste in a production process to obtain substance or material of original purpose or other purpose, including organic recycling, except for energy recovery.

Whereas organic recycling is an aerobic treatment including composting of waste or anaerobic treatment of waste that is subject to biologic decomposition in controlled environment using microbes as a result of which organic matter or methane is produced.
The main objective of recycling is to save materials and energy used for their production as well as to reduce low emission of greenhouse gases. The main methods used for the recycling of municipal waste include: selective collection, sorting stations, composting stations and biogas power plants.
 
One of the drawbacks of classic sorting is the reduction of quality of the sorted out materials in every next cycle of treatment, until the sorted waste is rendered useless. The operational data of waste sorting plants in Poland show that it is possible to recover ca. 9% of materials6. Very well organized recyclable material recovery systems (dedicated solutions) allow to increase the index up to ca. 25% of the input mass of municipal waste. It should be emphasized that sorting and selective collection businesses in Poland have been so far inefficient from economic point of view.

Thermal transformation of waste is understood as incineration of waste through oxidation and other thermal transformation processes, including thermal decomposition, gasification and plasma process, as long as substances produced during the thermal transformation processes are later combusted. Therefore even though there will be no waste incineration processes carried out in the designed plant (there will be gas combusted and gas is not a waste), according to the Act on waste it will be treated as an incineration plant. Incineration or co-incineration of combustible fraction of waste in special furnaces, often in combination with other fuels to maintain the combustion process or after-burn of the flue gas, is the most common form of thermal recycling.
 
Destructive decomposition, also called thermal decomposition (pyrolysis) is another form of thermal transformation of waste. It consists in degassing waste in the temperature of 500-800oC in special devices without access of air. It produces liquid fuel and gas, as well as quick coke and steam. The volume of waste to be disposed is reduced by ca. 62%. Even though the share of chemical recycling and thermal decomposition of waste in thermal transformation of waste is little, the methods are recognized as technologies alternative to incineration and are more and more often used in newly built facilities.

1) Renewables 2005, Global Status Report, www.ren21.net. Primary energy is a sum of energy contained in primary energy carriers i.
2) Renewables 2005... Large hydro power industry includes plants over 10MW.
3) Source: US Energy Information Administration (http://eia.doe.gov/)
4) Renewables 2005, Global Status Report, www.ren21.net
5) Research and Development Center for Town Ecology, Łódź.
6) Determinants and directions of changes of the municipal waste neutralization and recovery technologies in Poland up to 2020. A paper presented during conference: Balanced management of energy and waste in the aspect of climate changes. Marek Kundegórski, Grontmij Polska Sp. z o.o. Poznań 2008