The compliance culture and prudent risk management are the foundation of Polenergia Group’s business activity. The Group has in place a risk management system – it has implemented and applies appropriate risk management and monitoring policies and procedures.
One of the key elements of this system is management of ESG risk, including climate risk. The Group is taking strategic steps to prevent climate change. For this purpose, climate risks have been identified and their mitigation methods have been defined for the short, medium and long-term.
The Group Development Strategy announced in 2020 points to the importance of climate change as the foundation of the Group’s growth. Polenergia wants to grow in a sustainable fashion, based on renewable energy sources, transformation of the energy system towards zero emission and support for the Green Deal policy (achieving emission neutrality by 2050). The sustainable development area in Polenergia is supervised by Iwona Sierżęga, a Management Board Member.
Acting for energy transition, we are building sustainable supply chains for our projects, which does not only support the economy and growth of companies, but also contributes to creating a local market for service providers, technologies and competence associated with the RES industry. Cooperation with subcontractors is based on the environmental and social policy in place in the Group and the ethical standards (which include our environmental protection commitments).
Since 2015, the Company has reported greenhouse gas emissions for its facilities. The non-financial report refers to emissions from its facilities fired with low-emission fuel, such as: natural gas (Nowa Sarzyna Cogeneration Plant), waste coke-oven gas (Mercury Power Plant). In the case of coke-oven gas, its consumption in the electricity production process is a better solution than its combustion in a gas flare. We also report avoided emissions, i.e. a comparison of the annual production of the Group’s RES installations with the same volume of energy produced from coal. According to the Group’s development strategy, the gas facilities, which generate CO₂ emissions will be modernized towards the development of the green hydrogen technology.
As we develop new projects, such as onshore wind farms and large-scale photovoltaic farms, we assess the impact of our investment projects on climate change and global warming risk, as required by the Act Amending the Act on Sharing Information about the Environment and its Protection, Public Participation in Environmental Protection and Environmental Impact Assessment.
We also strive to conserve biodiversity, where protection, restoration or strengthening are forms of adaptation to climate change. Mandatory environmental supervision over each of the construction project carried out by the Group is an example of best practices in the service of biodiversity. Environmental supervision allows us to protect areas that are valuable to the natural environment during the implementation of projects. In each project, we implement the policy of charity and support for local communities. We understand them also as actions contributing to the improvement of biodiversity (planting flower meadows in the area of photovoltaic farms or protection of animal species inhabiting the areas).
We also develop the business of selling green energy to end-users, developing prosumer energy generation and electromobility. These actions are supported by education of customers in respect to the necessity to change the energy mix as the necessary element of preventing climate change.
1,057,661 tons of CO₂
emissions avoided in 2020 (by producing energy from RES, as compared to the same volume of energy produced from coal).
