• Energy Research

The Polish economy, and especially the energy sector, is facing an energy transformation. For decades, most electricity in Poland has been generated from hard coal, but in recent years, renewable energy sources have been gaining an increasing share of the market. The aim of the energy transformation is to reduce the carbon footprint in electricity production, which translates into the decarbonization of the economy, including manufactured products. Currently (2024), increasing the share of renewable energy sources raises major challenges in terms of energy storage or other activities and forces cooperation with flexible sources of electricity generation. One of the challenges is to determine what a decarbonized energy mix in Poland could look like in 2050, in which there would be sources (with a smaller share of coal sources in the mix than currently) of electricity generation based on hard coal with CCS technology. In order to do this in an economically efficient manner, there are aspects related to the location of power plants that would remain in operation or repower current generating units. The added value of the study is the simulation approach to the analysis of the problem of assessing the effectiveness of CCS technology implementation together with the transport and storage infrastructure, as well as the multi-aspect scenario analysis, which can determine the limits of CCS technology effectiveness for a given power unit. Positive simulation results (NPV amounted to 147 million Euro) and the knowledge obtained in the scope of the correlated and simultaneous impact of many important cost factors and prices of CO2 emission allowances make this analysis and its results close to reality. Examples of analyses of the effectiveness of CCS system implementations known from the literature are most often limited to determining linear relationships of single explanatory variables with a specific forecasted variable, even if these are multifactor mathematical models.

Previous analyses of the PV market (and the impact of the pandemic on it) have focused on the market as a whole. The literature does not contain analyses of selected services sectors (e.g., catering, hotel services) in terms of the use of photovoltaics. There are no studies that would show in which segments the demand profile for electricity most closely matches the production from photovoltaic installations (not to mention the impact of the pandemic). The authors analyzed selected service sectors (catering and hotel) in terms of the use of photovoltaics before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper proposes a comparative methodology for the use of photovoltaics for self-consumption, including statistical analyses and calculations of the self-consumption index for representatives of various selected services sectors. The highest value of the self-consumption ratio at the level of 52% was shown for cafes and restaurants (during the pandemic). Surprisingly, in the pandemic, the self-consumption rate increased for restaurants and cafes for the same size of installations (compared to pre-pandemic times).

In Poland, various solar collector systems are used; among them, the most popular are flat plate collectors (FPCs) and evacuated tube collectors (ETCs). The work presents two installations located at a distance of 80 km apart, working in similar external conditions. One of them contains 120 flat plate collectors and works for the preparation of hot water in a swimming pool building; the second one consists of 32 evacuated tube collectors with a heat pipe and supports the preparation of domestic hot water for a multi-family house. During the comparison of the two quite large solar installations, it was confirmed that the use of evacuated tube solar collectors shows a much better solar energy productivity than flat plate collectors for the absorber area. Higher heat solar gains (by 7.9%) were also observed in the case of the gross collector area. The advantages of evacuated tube collectors are observed mainly during colder periods, which allows for a steadier thermal energy production.

Consolidation with European social, economic and environmental programmes in the framework of Ukraine’s integration into the European energy space has become extremely important given the growing threats to energy security and should become the basis for greening regional and national innovation systems in the context of decarbonisation, the minimisation of carbon emissions and the transition to alternative energy sources. The comparison of the regions of the country by the level of enterprise innovation and the extrapolation of these results to the share of such enterprises in the total number of industrial entities in the regions helped identify their lack of correlation and emphasised the lack of stable dependence between industrial development and innovation activity. The methodology of the article includes a number of general scientific, special and interdisciplinary methods that allowed the screening of areas for the most favourable economic development, taking into account the synergistic component of regional development and achieving the research goal. The aim of this article is to analyse the innovative component of regional and national economic development for the implementation of decarbonisation and green energy transition in Ukraine, as well as substantiate the world’s leading imperatives and national directions for effective integration into relevant European programmes. An analysis of Ukraine’s rating status in several international indices of environmental efficiency and innovation activity in the regions showed the lack of correlation between regions of Ukraine, which actualises the search for the most effective drivers of economic development. At the same time, the consolidation of efforts of national stakeholders of innovative development in a country with relevant European institutions, particularly in the direction of greening regional economic systems, will ensure the development of innovative regions and industries, which will in turn be drivers of related territories and industries while ensuring a synergistic effect.

The paper considers technical and economic possibilities to provide geothermal heat to individual recipients using a mobile thermal storage system (M-TES) in Polish conditions. The heat availability, temperature and heat cost influence the choice of location—Bańska Niżna, near Zakopane in the southern part of the Poland. The indirect contact energy storage container was selected with phase change material characterized by a melting temperature of 70 °C and a heat storage capacity of 250 kJ/kg, in the amount of 800 kg. The economic profitability of the M-TES system (with a price per warehouse of 6000 EUR, i.e., a total of 12,000 EUR—two containers are needed) can be achieved for a heat demand of 5000 kWh/year with the price of a replaced heat source at the level of 0.21 EUR/kWh and a distance between the charging station and building (heat recipient) of 0.5 km. For the heat demand of 15,000 kWh/year, the price for the replaced heat reached EUR 0.11/kWh, and the same distance. In turn, for a demand of 25,000 kWh/year, the price of the replaced heat source reached 0.085 EUR/kWh. The distance significantly affected the economic profitability of the M-TES system—for the analyzed case, a distance around 3–4 km from the heat source should be considered.

The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a widely utilized technology for generating electricity from various sources, including geothermal energy, waste heat, biomass, and solar energy. Harnessing solar radiation to drive ORC is a promising renewable energy technology due to the high compatibility of solar collector operating temperatures with the thermal requirements of the cycle. The aim of this review article is to present and discuss the principles of solar-ORC technology and the broad range of solar-ORC systems that have been explored in the literature. Various solar energy technologies capable of powering ORC are investigated, including flat plate collectors, vacuum tube collectors, compound parabolic collectors, and parabolic trough collectors. The review places significant emphasis on the operating parameters of technology.

With the increasing share of renewable sources in the energy mix, there is a need to balance energy production from weather-dependent sources, such as wind turbines and photovoltaics. This is also a current global trend associated with climate policy. In Poland, there has been a significant increase in energy production from renewable sources, leading to a duck curve phenomenon mainly in the case of photovoltaics, which requires balancing this production through various measures. One possible way to achieve this is energy storage installation. This article identifies the need for energy storage to ensure the stability of electricity production from low-flexibility sources like coal-based power plants. For this purpose, a methodology has been developed to determine the daily minimum energy storage capacities which would also allow for the integration of other stable (though less flexible) energy sources, such as nuclear power. In the case of Poland, energy storage has been estimated to require, as a median value, approximately 6 GWh of additional storage capacity, which is equivalent to twice the planned capacity of the Młoty Pumped Storage Power Plant.