On 1 December 2023, a workshop ‘Social climate policy and the development of municipalities’ was held at the Konin Town Hall. The Polish Green Network and the Konin Agglomeration Association jointly organised the event.
The workshop topic was the new variant of the greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme, or so-called ETS2, and the associated Social Climate Fund. ETS2 will extend the Energy and Industry Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS1), in force since 2005, to include two new sectors – construction and road transport. According to the European Union’s decision in early 2023, ETS2 will come into force in 2027. Since the resulting burden on the construction and transport sectors will translate into costs borne directly by end users, i.e., all of us, the European Commission has decided to create a special fund – the Social Climate Fund. This tool will be available from 2026 to support the groups of consumers most at risk of financial consequences of ETS2, particularly energy-poor households.
Poland could receive more than EUR 11 billion
However, the condition for an EU country to benefit from this fund is to draw up a Social Climate Plan, i.e., a document indicating how the government intends to use the available funding (and for Poland, this will be as much as EUR 11.4 billion!). A representative of Polish Green Network, who led this part of the workshop, stressed, the guidelines as to the content of the plan are ambitious and require the Polish government to begin work on the document as soon as possible. This is because it must contain a comprehensive strategy combining reforms, investments and direct aid based on well-thought-out data and indicators and going beyond the timeframe of the Fund’s operation, i.e. beyond 2032.
The second part of the workshop was devoted to exemplary topics that should become part of the strategy mentioned above. Campaigners from Polish Green Network and Habitat for Humanity Poland talked about pro-social solutions in buildings and housing, which, although innovative, can and should soon become available to a broad Polish audience. Thus, participants heard, on the one hand, about the current and projected development of energy communities and various forms of collective prosumers, and, on the other hand, about the intermediary project between municipalities and people looking for housing, which is Social Rental Agencies.
The workshop was attended by 22 people and included representatives of the city of Konin, the town of Turek, neighbouring municipalities and cooperative movements. The event organiser from Polish Green Network emphasises that it aimed to provide the audience with knowledge about the Social Climate Fund and encourage them to monitor and participate in creating the required plan. Indeed, such a document can only be produced with the involvement and cooperation of the government with representatives of municipalities and regions. For this reason, the Polish Green Network plans to organise similar workshops in other areas of the country.
