More than 100 participants, including high-ranking officials from the United States, Central and Eastern Europe and the European Commission, descended on Warsaw to discuss ways of working together towards energy and climate transformation, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Kurtyka said Poland had committed to “building a new, net-zero system by 2040,” comparable in size “to the current, conventional infrastructure, which took a century to create.”
In recent years, he added, the country has managed to reduce the role of traditional power sources by 10 percentage points, to 70 percent of the energy mix, partly thanks to solar panels.
The number of individuals who both produce and consume power across the country skyrocketed from 4,000 in 2015 to 600,000 in June this year, Kurtyka said.
“We are making significant progress in this area, but Poland also faces numerous challenges,” he told the gathering.
Meanwhile, Andrew Light, a senior American official who oversees international affairs at the US Department of Energy, said Washington was working to decarbonise its energy sector by 2035 while learning from Europe.
He added that only by restoring and nurturing transatlantic ties and trade routes, will it be possible for America to tackle new challenges and go forward, the IAR news agency reported.
On Thursday, Poland’s Kurtyka is set to meet for talks with US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who is the other co-host of the two-day ministerial get-together of the P-TECC initiative, IAR reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR