Abstract:

The paper presents an analysis – over the period of 2003 and 2018 – of the economic efficiency of Polish power generation companies. Firstly, the market environment of Polish energy companies is analysed. Then key power companies operating on the domestic market are presented and characterized. The main part of the paper is the economic efficiency analysis carried out for energy companies aggregated to the following groups: public coal-fired thermal power plants, public lignite-fired thermal power plants and public CHP plants. This analysis includes a comparison of total costs and revenues generated from the electricity production, as well as prices of electricity sold and technology-specific cost of generation in each group. The results of the conducted research indicate a general decline in profits generated from the core activity of these companies, namely the sale of electricity. Moreover, economic instability is observed in subsequent years of the analysis, due to electricity prices and production costs fluctuations, as well as changes in regulations related to environment and climate protection.