Poland had a renewable energy share of 13.53% last year. This was 0.32 percentage points below its annual goal putting it on track to achieving its 15% EU target by 2020, an analysis by the Polish Wind Energy Association (PSEW) has shown.
The small deviation is going to grow to over 0.5 percentage points this year, PSEW said. In terms of production, the gap was 0.5TWh last year and is expected to double to 1TWh in 2017.
"Poland has built a renewable energy sector capable of producing over 20TWh of energy annually, but in order to meet the EU target, annual production of more than 30TWh is needed," PSEW said.
A crisis on the market of green certificates has been blamed for the stalling renewables growth in Poland. The certificate price has been hovering at around €9.40/certificate for several months, down 84% from a 2014 peak.
Retailers have to buy certificates to show that a certain proportion of the energy they supply comes from renewables or pay a substitution fee.
However, production decreased last year as the depressed price of green certificates led producers to give up on biomass to produce energy.
In Poland co-firing of biomass with coal is officially recognised as a renewable source of energy.
Furthermore, recent law changes have effectively stopped the development of new wind energy capacity in Poland.
While a number of wind projects went online in 2016 before the law took effect, new developments have since stalled.
Article was first published on Ends Europe.