Abstract:

Maintaining the energy security is one of the key economic priorities, in which long-term monitoring and shaping of the energy structure takes a leading role. Such monitoring should be accompanied by forecasting the energy needs of the economy and determining the sources of their coverage. Bearing in mind the above circumstances, the main aim of this article is to carry out a long-term analysis of the Poland’s energy balance in the context of current and future conditions of the European climate policy and the sources of risk generated by changes observed for Polish mining production. The research period covers the years 1965-2015, and the research was conducted using basic statistical risk measures, including structural ratios, trend analyzes, standard deviations and coefficients of variation, additionally using a risk checklist based on literature studies on European legal and economic conditions in the field of energy and environmental protection policy. Undoubtedly, it can be stated on the basis of the conducted research that the changes in the Poland’s energy balance, caused largely by the European Union’s anti-coal policy, pose a serious threat to hard coal extraction and consumption, however, due to their evolutionary and slow nature, they are not a source of risk that would contribute to immediate collapse of demand and complete liquidation of mining production.