Approximately 300 companies from energy-intensive industries will be entitled to compensation for the costs of acquiring CO2 emission allowances included in the energy price. Such will be the effects of the Act of the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology (MPiT) signed President Andrzej Duda. Compensation will help the industry to remain competitive with foreign countries and to maintain around 1. 3 million jobs in energy-intensive companies and their partners. The first disbursements – for 2019 – will take place in 2020. It will receive about PLN 0,89 billion a year.
The Act on the Compensation System for Energy-intensive Sectors and Subsectors is one of the elements of a comprehensive package for smaller industrial centres developed in the Innovation Department of the Ministry of Transport and Tourism and adopted in May 2018 by the Economic Committee of the Council of Ministers. The package responds to the fact that energy-intensive industries are now being charged increasingly higher fees and regulatory costs. This reduces their competitiveness and, in extreme cases, could lead to a wave of divestments or even the complete disappearance of a number of energy-intensive industries in Poland. This, in turn, could have a very negative impact on dozens of medium-sized urban centres, whose local economy and labour market are highly dependent on the presence of flagship companies.
The package for smaller industrial centres – apart from compensations to cover the costs of CO2 emission allowances for energy-intensive sectors – includes the already introduced reduction in excise duty on electricity, a radical reduction in the transitional charge and a relief from the cogeneration charge. The Ministry is also in the process of notifying the European Commission of the first EU stamp duty relief.