Poland's coal reserves

Coal has been Poland’s most important resource both internally and as an export. For many years abundant sulfur deposits made sulfer Poland’s principal nonmetal export. Copper has been a significant metal resource both domestically and globally. Such agricultural products as potatoes, sugar beets, wheat, and rye have played pivotal roles in Poland’s economy both through domestic use and export.

The Country

Poland is located in east-central Europe, bounded to the north by the Baltic Sea, Russia, and Lithuania; to the east by Belarus and Ukraine; to the south by the Czech Republic and Slovakia; and to the west by Germany. Topographically, Poland is predominantly planar, interrupted by the Carpathian Mountains in the south. The average elevation of Poland is only 173 meters, with only 3 percent of its land above 500 meters. Geographers have divided Poland into several zones, the most important of which are the central lowlands, which are characterized by largely level terrain intersected by such major river systems as the Vistula and the Oder. To the south of these lowlands are situated the foothills of the Sudety and Carpathian mountains and mountain chains. Poland’s lake region lies north of the central lowlands, with forest-covered hills and valleys that are populated by lakes, streams, and bogs. Along the Baltic Sea are coastal lowlands, with two principal inlets, the Gulf of Gdańsk in the east and Pomeranian Bay in the west.

Portions of this variegated geographical setting have been the source of Poland’s principal natural resources and the basis for much of its economy. For example, Silesia, in southwest Poland, has been the chief source not only of Poland’s coal but also of its copper, zinc, and lead. The soils of the central region have allowed Poles to develop several important agricultural resources. Because of Poland’s tortuous political history, these natural resources have not always been efficiently exploited, but with the formation of the republic and Poland’s entry into the European Union (EU) in 2004, Poland became one of the world’s leading exporters of several resources; in 2005, it ranked twenty-first in global commodity exports. In 1990, its gross domestic product (GDP) was only $59 billion, whereas in 2005, it exceeded $303 billion. This meant that Poland had the eleventh largest economy in Europe. Its GDP increased again in 2006, and it was the only EU country to avoid a recession in 2008–9. The GDP growth rate from 2014–17 generally exceeded 3 percent. By 2023, Poland's GDP had reached $419 billion.

Coal

Dubbed “black gold” in good times, coal, Poland’s most substantial natural resource, has been both a blessing and a curse for the country. From the eighteenth century, the mining of some of the world’s richest coal fields became a vital in the Polish economy, eventually resulting, in the late twentieth century, in a world-record 96 percent dependence on anthracite (hard) and especially lignite (brown) and bituminous (soft) coal for the country’s power needs, while concomitantly creating problematic domestic pollution and that contribute significantly to global change. Geologists have estimated Poland’s total coal in excess of 125 billion metric tons, with hard-coal reserves at more than 40 billion metric tons. The twenty-first century discovery of new deposits meant that reserves will be able to meet the country’s requirements for five hundred more years, twice the rest of the world’s average.

The largest coal lodes are in Silesia, which has become an important industrial region in southwestern Poland and accounts for three-quarters of the hard-coal reserves. Significant lignite deposits have been found in the central and western regions. Because of the pivotal importance of Upper Silesian hard coal to the economy, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, officials, in an unprecedentedly costly project, subsidized a “coal trunk-line” from the mines of the south to the Baltic Sea port of Gdynia in the north. This helped to make anthracite the principal hard-currency earner for Poland during the Communist and post-Communist periods. In 1979, Polish miners produced more than 180 million metric tons of coal, but Communist-party leaders emphasized quantitative-production goals to the point that gross inefficiencies and environmental damage lowered the quality of Polish life. Post-Communist leaders have tried to mitigate these problems by closing inefficient mines, reducing dependence on coal, and instituting policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, all of which has led to a decline in annual coal output. For example, in 2000, the government closed twenty-two mines, and by 2004, the country’s dependence on coal for power generation had been reduced to 92 percent. Nevertheless, Poland remained the world’s sixth-largest coal-mining country.

Before joining the European Union in 2004, Poland had to bring the coal-mining and power-generating industries into compliance with the EU’s norms for the economy and the environment. More mines were closed and became a clean-burning substitute, but this did not prevent Greenpeace activists from attacking Poland’s heavy reliance on coal, both in the electric-power and chemical industries. In 2008, environmental activists were able to disrupt operations at an open-pit coal mine in Konin. Like many countries around the world, Poland faces crucial decisions about how to achieve an environmentally friendly balance of energy from renewable and nonrenewable resources. In 2016, Poland was the tenth-largest consumer of coal in the world and the second-largest in the EU; 92 percent of electricity and 89 percent of heat in the country was generated from coal. By 2023, Poland had reduced the share of its electricity generated by coal to just 36 percent to reduce its carbon emissions. Similarly, its domestic coal production industry experienced a significant downward trend.

Sulfur

In recent times, sulfur has been Poland’s second most important resource. The Polish sulfur industry developed later and more slowly than the coal industry, and it was not until the 1950s, when rich sulfur deposits were discovered in the south-central regions, that extensive mining began. Afterward, with the discovery of other deposits, certain analysts ranked Polish sulfur reserves, which may exceed 1 billion metric tons, as among the largest in the world. Some deposits are close to the surface, and miners have used traditional techniques to excavate the sulfur, but for deep deposits they have used the Frasch process, a three-piped technique involving pressurized hot water, to extract this sulfur. By the last decade of the twentieth century, Polish sulfur production ranked sixth in the world. Sulfur has been important domestically for the chemical industry, and Poland has become one of the world’s twenty largest manufacturers of sulfuric acid.

During the 1960’s, Poland began exporting its sulfur, and by 1980, nearly 75 percent of the sulfur it produced was going to other nations. However, during the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, production diminished, largely because of low global prices. A further reason was the discovery of other methods for obtaining sulfur more efficiently than mining, for example, by the desulfurization of bituminous materials. Environmental considerations may also have played a role—for example, the international Second Sulfur Protocol (1994) aimed at decreasing global sulfur-dioxide emissions. In the late 1980s, Poland’s annual output of sulfur was more than 725,000 metric tons, whereas by the late 1990s, this output had shrunk to about 118,000 metric tons. Even with this reduced demand, Poland continued to be a significant exporter of refined sulfur to such countries as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, and Russia. In 2022, Poland exported $18.1 million of sulfur, making it the world's eighteenth largest sulfur exporter for that year.

Metal Resources

Poland has significant deposits of several metal ores. Copper ores in particular have proven valuable to the domestic economy, but refined copper and such copper products as wire rods and cathodes have become major exports to such countries as Germany and France. Like sulfur, copper-ore deposits have been a relatively recent discovery. In the 1960s and 1970s, major finds in southwestern Poland led the country to a more than 3 percent share of refined copper in the following decades (this meant that Poland secured a place among the world’s top ten producers). Because these deposits, which have been augmented by finds in 1998, also contain other metals, such as silver, gold, selenium, and nickel, calculating precise numbers for copper-ore reserves, which are nonetheless considerable, has been difficult. By 2005, a Polish company, KGHM Polska Miedź SA, had become Europe’s largest, and the world’s sixth-largest, refined-copper supplier.

Lead and zinc ores are often found together, and Poland possesses the world’s fifth largest deposits of these ores. The mining of such deposits has had a long history in Poland, dating to the sixteenth century, when a mine near Olkusz, just north of Cracow, became a source of these metals. Other deposits were later found in west-central Poland, and by 1982, the country was known to have the world’s fifth-largest deposits of lead and zinc. In this year the output of lead and zinc ores was about 4.5 million metric tons, which were smelted into 149,000 metric tons of zinc and 71,000 metric tons of lead. In 1990, about three-quarters of Poland’s zinc and nearly all of its lead were used domestically, but a post-Communist investment program facilitated increased production of high-quality zinc, some of which was exported. However, the future production of zinc and lead has become problematic, because of the exhaustion of several Silesian mines.

Although Poland has iron-ore deposits, these deposits have not been adequate to meet domestic needs. During the Communist era, the Soviet Union supplied more than three-quarters of Poland’s iron ore. Native iron-ore reserves were extensively used from the 1950s to 1970s, but during the 1980s, the output from the country’s iron-ore mines declined, and deposits of low-quality were unable to compensate for this decline. At the end of the twentieth and the start of the twenty-first centuries, the Polish government developed a plan for restructuring its iron and steel industry. Iron mines and steel mills were forced to adapt to a market economy, with the goal of becoming part of the European Union, which occurred after 2004.

Agricultural Resources

Poland’s climate, with moderate temperatures and rainfall in the central plains, has fostered the cultivation of a wide variety of crops. Regions of sandy soil have proved suitable for rye, while the rich soils of the south-central region support wheat and barley. The less fertile soils of the north are used for oats, while potatoes are grown in almost all regions. During the latter decades of the twentieth century, agricultural products constituted almost 10 percent of the national income, with a large percentage of output from small, privately owned farms, even during the Communist period.

In terms of area, farmland constitutes Poland’s principal resource, covering more than three-fifths of the country’s land. In 1989, 14.4 million hectares were in use for crop cultivation, 265,000 hectares for orchards, and 4.04 million hectares for pastures and meadows. Because Poland’s land area was reduced by one-fifth after World War II, its arable land was also considerably decreased. Traditionally, agriculture played an important role in the Polish economy, but in recent decades its share of the GDP has been decreasing. For example, in 1988, it was about 12 percent; in 1994, about 6.4 percent; and in 2001, only 3.3 percent. Poland’s entry into the European Union in 2004 helped to improve the status of agriculture through farm subsidies and other concessions.

Wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, and rye constitute Poland’s principal crops. In 1989, Poland was the second largest producer of potatoes and rye in the world. It has also been in the top-ten producers of sugar beets and oats and in the top twenty for wheat and barley. Because of a world surplus of rye, production in Poland declined in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, from 2004 to 2008, the percentage of Poland’s share of the world market for food and other agricultural products increased. Though still small, Poland’s production of organically grown food has increased.

Livestock constitutes about two-fifths of Poland’s total agricultural production. Traditionally, pigs have been Poland’s principal commercial animal. For example, in 1955, nearly 11 million pigs were produced, compared to smaller numbers of cattle and sheep. In the following decades pork production, though still high, suffered when compared to poultry and cattle increases. By 2008, because of high feed costs, increased EU competition, inefficient farms, and a strong złoty, Poland produced the lowest number of pigs in twenty-five years. In fact, Poland imported more pork than it exported. Poland's pork production continued to decline throughout the 2020s, with many farmers blaming rising production costs.

Water Resources, Fishing, and Aquaculture

Water, like agriculture, has the capacity to be a if carefully managed. Clean water also provides an environment for potentially renewable fish resources. Throughout most of its early history, Poland had sufficient water resources, both static and flowing, for its agricultural, industrial, and domestic needs. The Polish industrial revolution was initially powered by falling water. In modern Poland, more than 125 large hydropower installations exist, though environmentalists point out that only 15 percent of Poland’s rivers’ potential is actually being used to generate energy. During the Communist era extensive withdrawals of by industry were not matched by a desire to purify the often-polluted effluents. During the first two decades of post-Communist Poland three-fourths of water withdrawals continued to be made by industry, though regulations concerning pollutants have begun to clean Poland’s waters.

Fish in Poland’s lakes and rivers have been an important resource. During the post-World War II Communist period, freshwater fish catches varied from just under 100,000 metric tons in 1970 to a high of about 210,000 metric tons in 1987. Fish catches then declined in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, but this decline was made up for by an ever-increasing aquacultural production of fish. This business, which began in the late 1970s, reached 140,000 metric tons of fish production in 2000. In 2015, 187,100 metric tons of fish were caught and 38,590 metric tons produced by aquaculture. In 2016, fisheries and aquaculture generated 1.83 billion Euros for the country. In 2023, Poland produced 104.6 thousand metric tons of frozen saltwater fish, 67,335 thousand metric tons of canned fish, and 27,359 thousand metric tons of frozen saltwater fillets.

Other Resources

The mining of salt has been important to Poland since the Middle Ages. The first salt mines, centered in an area near Cracow, provided salt to Poles and other countries until the middle of the twentieth century, when other deposits in central Poland became the primary source. These relatively recently discovered deposits, which have been estimated at nearly 47 billion metric tons, now constitute 65 percent of the nation’s salt resources. Poland produced 9.5 thousand metric tons of salt in 2023.

Although Poland was one of the world’s first countries to develop an oil industry, its oil and natural gas deposits are relatively modest. Geologists have discovered deposits of oil and natural gas in the Carpathians, Sudety, and Pomerania; in 1985, a major oil field was discovered in the Baltic Sea. Poland’s oil reserves total more than 700 million barrels, but oil production has dropped in recent decades, and domestic oil has never accounted for more than 5 percent of total Polish consumption. Poland has been heavily dependent, first on the Soviet Union, then on Russia, for its oil. Similarly, Poles have extracted natural gas from deposits in Silesia and elsewhere, but, while production expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, it declined thereafter.

Poland’s forestlands account for more than one-quarter of its territory. The state owns more than four-fifths of these forests, with the remainder in private hands. Proposed regulations on timber harvesting in 2025 have angered those in the timber, furniture, and paper industries. Poland's Ministry of Climate and Environment, which manages the state forests, planned to reduce timber harvesting by 21 percent, compared to what was harvested in 2022. Opponents of the reduction pointed out that, unlike metal and plastic, wood sequesters carbon and is, therefore, sustainable, so its harvesting should not be restricted. However, the restrictions were introduced the limit the amount of raw timber exported to the European Union, not to slow the effects of climate change.

The state has set aside some forests as parks and preserves, one of the best-known being Białowieza, famous for its primeval trees and herds of European bison. Preserving Poland’s natural capital has not been confined to the national parks and more than five hundred nature preserves. Post-Communist officials have passed laws protecting many species of plants and animals while also developing ways of saving precious habitats.

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