The local campaign against the Polnoc power plant

A recently launched website provides information on risks associated with the Północ (North) Power Plant in Poland to offer a critical balance to the so far rather promotional debate about the project.

As more investors in Poland decide to freeze the work on their new coal projects or abandon them altogether there is one stark exception to that rule – a huge 2000MWe greenfield project in the Pomerania region in north Poland.

A recently launched website now provides information on risks associated with the Północ (North) Power Plant project to offer a critical balance to the so far rather promotional debate about the project.

www.stopep.org The campaign website by Polish NGOs and local communities.

Concerns include the lack of access to unbiased information for the local community that is opposing the project. Originally involved to monitor the potential involvement of international financial institutions - a situation that has not materialised - Bankwatch has since then supported the local community in Kociewie region. We organised meetings between locals and experts that helped citizens in knowing their rights to freely express opinions that are unfavourable to the Północ power plant – a project that includes the construction of a coal-fired power plant in the middle of a fertile agricultural these people call their home.

A debate in October 2011 (organised by the Pelplin major with the support of NGOs including Bankwatch) on the advantages and disadvantages of the Północ Power Plant drew more than 200 participants. Experts from both sides in the fields of law, hydrobiology, economy and chemistry to expressed their views and addressed questions by the citizens. Since then neither the investor nor the region’s officials were willing to continue the dialogue claiming that all has been already decided and that the planned construction is inevitable.

Yet here we are almost a year and a half later with more resistance to the power plant, less conviction on the side of the investor and an unfavourable economic outlook for coal power plants in general. One hope being floated is a Chinese interest to finance what the European financial institutions have so wisely chosen not to.