EUROPE’S LAST COAL
In Poland, eighty thousand people still work in coal mines—the last in a European Union that is fully committed to the energy transition. Yet coal is being extracted at record rates worldwide, and many are asking: is it really worth completely phasing out this fossil fuel?
Coal heartland of the Old Continent, Upper Silesia is the last district in the European Union where coal is still mined. Here in southern Poland, schools still train young miners, and every day eighty thousand people descend underground to extract tons of black rock—the same resource that still generates half of the country’s electricity.
Upper Silesia is the most complex testing ground of Europe’s energy transition. The decarbonization strategy set in European Commission admits no exceptions, and within a few decades this economy will have to give way to a “climate-neutral” model. The process is already underway: as power plants gradually shift from coal to gas, two-thirds of the mines have been closed or converted into museums, restaurants, research centers, and even golf courses and gaming facilities. But will the billions from the Just Transition Fund be enough to complete the transformation and redeploy the workforce, which exceeds two hundred thousand people across the remaining active mines (around twenty) and their supply chains?
In 2025, the world extracted more coal than in any previous year: over nine billion tonnes, much of it in China, India, and Indonesia. Poland produces just 85 million tonnes—less than one percent. Yet for Upper Silesia, giving up coal carries the weight of an identity trauma as much as an economic one. “On the one hand, we will lose a centuries-old tradition and a stable source of energy,” says Jacek Nowak, researcher at the Silesian University of Technology, “and on the other, we will continue to buy coal from countries that respect neither environmental standards nor workers’ rights.”
Moreover, producing steel—which is used, for example, to build wind turbines that in turn generate clean energy—requires metallurgical coking coal. The European Union has included it in its list of critical raw materials, and Upper Silesia holds the largest deposits on the continent, covering about one third of European demand. In short, in an era of uncertainty and geopolitical tensions, completely phasing out coal may be more complicated than it appears.
