Wagons loaded with coal sit on the tracks in the mining town of Rybnik, Poland on March 15, 2019 | Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images Poland’s PiS tweaks climate policy The new government is talking up climate and renewables, but the country still relies on coal.

WARSAW — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s new government has reshuffled the energy and climate portfolios — a hint that the country's traditional defense of coal is shifting.

That was underlined in Morawiecki’s first speech to the new parliament earlier this week after last month’s election, when he didn't mention coal a single time.

“Conventional energy will be important for our power system for a long time, but realities are changing. Once we could not afford to develop renewable sources of energy but now we cannot afford not to develop them,” Morawiecki said.

Then there's the country's new climate ministry, headed by Michał Kurtyka, the former president of the U.N.'s COP24 climate talks and a technocrat who isn't a member of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.

In his first days in office, Kurtyka has discussed issues like electric mobility and waste, and said that he had invited teen climate campaigner Greta Thunberg to take part in last year's climate summit in Katowice, Poland.

Coal generates about 80 percent of Poland's electricity, but the country is under growing pressure from the EU to slash emissions

"In our national debate, the importance of climate change is growing very strongly," he told radio RMF FM last week.

Kurtyka should guarantee a "technocratic approach" by the new government, said Aleksander Śniegocki, project manager for energy and climate at WiseEuropa, a Warsaw-based think tank. "They’re going to move closer to European conservatives who no longer deny there’s a need for climate transformation — which is what the PiS government would do not that long ago.”

Morawiecki also shut down the energy ministry, headed by coal defender Krzysztof Tchórzewski. Instead, it's being amalgamated into a new ministry in charge of state-controlled assets — the government owns most of the country's coal industry and power utilities.

“It was pretty clear from the expose [the maiden speech] that the government finally noticed the importance of climate change. It’s telling that Morawiecki did not mention coal in his speech. That means the reality is catching up with the government,” said Śniegocki.

But the direction of Poland’s climate policy will only be clear once the government decides on the actual competencies of the ministries, he added.

Coal generates about 80 percent of Poland's electricity, but the country is under growing pressure from the EU to slash emissions. Incoming Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants the bloc to become climate neutral by 2050 — Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are resisting. She also wants to slash emissions by 2030 by 50 percent or even as much as 55 percent compared to 1990 levels — up from the current goal of 40 percent. Again, Poland is opposed.

That makes Kurtyka the point man in what are likely to be fraught talks with the EU about emissions reductions and the scale of financial compensation through the Just Transition Fund demanded by Poland and other coal-dependent countries on making a green energy shift.

“He should spearhead [the] Polish team in negotiations with the EU over the 2030 climate goals, EU’s ambitions under the Paris Agreement, and the 2050 climate neutrality goal. That’s an enormous challenge,” said Lidia Wojtal, a former Polish negotiator at COP climate summits.

Kicking a coal habit ... slowly

Poland is scaling back its coal use — but at a much slower place than needed to hit the EU’s emissions targets. In 2030, the government foresees that coal will generate 60 percent of Poland’s electricity. Poland does have a draft energy policy for 2040, but it hasn’t been finalized. Ministers assume that in 2040 coal will still generate around half of electricity and that emissions will fall by 50 percent.

Despite that, coal is increasingly uneconomical. The rising price of permits under the EU's Emissions Trading System is putting a squeeze on utilities.

Imported coal is twice as cheap as domestic production and unsold coal has been piling up in mines and power plants. Power production dropped by 3 percent for hard coal in the first eight months of the year, and by 13 percent for lignite, according to specialist website Wysokie Napięcie.

The government is talking a lot more about renewable energy, and both Morawiecki and Kurtyka were headliners at an event promoting electric cars this week.

However, progress on the ground has been halting. Warsaw is nearly certain to miss the EU-imposed target of 15 percent of renewable energy in final energy consumption by 2020. According to the latest official data published by Poland’s statistical office, the share was just 11.16 percent in 2018, an expansion of a tiny 0.26 percentage points compared to 2017.

Despite the shakeup of ministerial jobs and the shift in tone from Morawiecki, Poland isn't going completely green.

“Poland could well miss the target by as many as 3 percentage points,” said Grzegorz Wiśniewski, head of the Institute for Renewable Energy, a pro-renewables lobby.

The government is throwing some last-minute measures at the problem. A number of auctions for sales of renewable energy are slated for the final weeks of this year, that will boost renewables’ share in consumption.

Morawiecki also pledged to build nuclear power plants, although he didn't give a completion date.

Despite the shakeup of ministerial jobs and the shift in tone from Morawiecki, Poland isn't going completely green.

In his speech to parliament, Morawiecki bashed the EU’s climate policy as economically unsound.

“We consider it a mistake when, as a result of climate regulation, Polish and EU jobs leave to neighboring countries. The carbon footprint, tax regulations and prevention of carbon leakage must support Polish energy and the Polish transformation,” he said.

He also complained that the EU wasn’t taking into account the existing structure of the Polish economy and energy mix, and its need for secure electricity supplies.

“Our climate transformation must be safe and beneficial for Poland,” Morawiecki said.