PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna S.A. is the biggest power engineering holding in Poland. Generating electricity and supplying it to more than five million customers, we feel responsible for both Poland's energy security and protection of the natural environment. The PGE Capital Group has an ambition to conduct its operations in a sustainable manner and compliance with high ecological standards and the principles of the business's social responsibility.
In order to face the challenges of the modern world related, among other things, to climate protection, PGE initiates activities in many different areas. We strive to develop relations between economic growth and concern for the natural environment in a responsible and conscious manner. We initiate numerous activities connected with research and development, analyse our environmental impact and carry out tasks in the field of environmental protection and generation of electricity from renewable resources.
Towards clean energy
The PGE Capital Group is the leading producer of "green energy" in Poland. By 2012 we intend to invest 38.9 billion PLN in the construction and modernization of our conventional generation capacity, the modernization of our distribution assets, and in new technologies. Over 20% of these funds will be expenditures on the development of renewable sources of energy.
PGE is also implementing investment projects whose objective is to increase the generation of electricity together with the production of heat (so-called cogeneration). This process ensures better utilization of a fuel's primary energy and higher efficiency of the combustion process. With respect to CO2 emissions, the PGE Capital Group has developed a short-term strategy for balancing emission allowances and factual emissions in the years 2008-2012.
In search of new pro-ecological solutions
The most important research and development projects currently being implemented by the PGE Capital Group include the construction of a demonstration plant for the capture, transport and storage of carbon dioxide at the Bełchatów Power Plant - a CCS plant
The CCS plant is to be integrated with the new 858 MW power generation unit, currently under construction. The plant will capture carbon dioxide resulting from the process of fuel (lignite) combustion; subsequently, captured gas will be transported to places of underground storage.
The PGE Capital Group's other projects currently under implementation include a programme of drying lignite for power generation purposes and an international research project aimed at the development and testing of the possibilities of obtaining fuel in the form of synthetic gas and hydrogen from coal and lignite deposits which are hard to access.
We protect and teach to protect the natural environment
The only vertically integrated company conducting various operations from generation to delivery of electricity to the end users, for many years PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna S.A. has been consistent in analysing the impact of its activities on the natural environment at each link of the value chain. In consequence, PGE carries out many projects and investments whose objective is to minimize this impact and to protect natural ecosystems existing in its area of operation.
Depending on the specific character of a given entity within the PGE Capital Group, its position in the value chain of electricity generation and distribution, these activities comprise, among other things, mined land restoration, gas and dust emission management, soil and water protection, waste management, as well as bird protection based on the installation of nest platforms for the white stork or fluorescent tiles scaring birds away from overhead power lines.
Detailed information on proecological activities in the key areas of the PGE Capital Group's environmental impact is presented below:
In recognition of their involvement in activities aimed at minimizing their environmental impact, the entities belonging to the PGE Capital Group have been awarded with such titles as "Companies Friendly to the Environment", "Fair Play Companies", "Protectors of the Environment", and "Leaders of Polish Ecology".