KATOWICE, Poland, May 15 (Reuters) – Poland needs to invest in wind farms in the Baltic Sea and in nuclear power, the government official responsible for power and gas infrastructure Piotr Naimski said on Tuesday.
Poland produces most of its electricity from coal and has started to look at cleaner and cheaper technologies to comply with European Union emission reduction requirements.
The Energy Ministry is considering building Poland’s first nuclear power station but still needs government approval for the already delayed project. It has also proposed laws to enable investment in wind power, which it had previously blocked.
“We need both. Offshore wind-farms will be built in the mid 2020s … We need them just as we need nuclear,” Piotr Naimski said on the sidelines of the European Economic Congress.
He told reporters that nuclear power could be a back-up for the variable power production from offshore wind farms.
Naimski, who also supervises gas infrastructure, said Polish firms could invest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the United States. Poland, which now imports much of its gas from Russia, has already received some shipments of U.S. LNG.
He said talks on making such investments were being held at “different levels”, but he did not give details.
In November, Polish gas firm PGNiG signed the first mid-term deal for LNG deliveries from the United States, part of an effort by Poland to diversify its gas supplies. (Reporting by Wojciech Zurawski Writing by Agnieszka Barteczko Editing by Edmund Blair)
Source: af.reuters.com