While the Polish government has ambitious plans to expand the country’s wind generation capacity to 6,100 MW by 2020, industry experts think this will be difficult to realize owing to Poland’s very complicated approval processes and prohibitive environmental regulations. Despite these obstacles, the Polish government plans to continue with its current strategy of incentivizing renewables via its “green certificates” scheme. The scheme requires the country’s electricity producers to generate a certain minimum percentage of their grid in-feeds from renewables and to purchase “green certificates” to cover any shortfalls.

Essen-based RWE Innogy is one of the key players in the Polish wind energy market. The company already operates three wind farms in Poland. “The Polish market has been integral to the expansion of our on-shore wind generation capacity. In the last three years, we have installed over 108 MW in Poland alone. The country’s excellent wind resources, the strong expertise and experience of our team, and our close working relationship with RWE’s local subsidiary, RWE Polska S.A., are fundamental to our success in the Polish wind energy market,” said Wilfried Topp, who heads up RWE Innogy’s Onshore Wind/Poland division. “However, further expansion of the country’s electricity grid and a dependable policy environment are key prerequisites for realizing any of the many potential investments we have in our project pipeline,” he added.