The new Polish government has announced its ambition to become a green player in Europe, backing a 90% greenhouse gas reduction target for 2040 and looking to pull forward the country’s coal exit.
Poland generates 70% of its electricity and two-thirds of its home heating from coal. With coal mining an essential economic activity in rural areas, maintaining state support for the brown stuff was a central part of past governments ruled by the nationalist PiS party.
But as a new centrist government took over in Warsaw, change is now underway.
“I’m coming here with a message of Poland stepping up its efforts to fight climate change,” said state secretary for climate Urszula Zielińska, who arrived in Brussels on Monday for an informal meeting of the EU’s Environment Council.
“We will step up our efforts and cooperate with European Union from now on in a much faster, much smoother, and much more confident way,” said Zielińska who was appointed three weeks ago.
In EU matters, “we need to embrace the 90% reduction emission reduction target” that the European Commission is expected to table in the coming weeks for 2040, she said.
That means Poland will back EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and ambitious countries like Denmark and Germany, which are supporting a 90% greenhouse gas reduction target for 2040, to be presented on 6 February.
But she also stuck to Poland’s long-standing policy by insisting that richer EU countries continue to support the poorer Eastern Europe in their green transition.
“If this target is agreed, we will be at the same time emphasising the need to help countries like Poland, like many countries in central Eastern Europe, look after the social part of delivering such ambitious target,” Zielińska said.
Coal exit date to be brought forward
Domestically, the new government is also reevaluating the country’s coal policy.
“We are currently in the process of reviewing policies that concern climate and transition and energy plans,” the new state secretary explained, indicating that Warsaw was looking to undertake a “very fast” update of its National Energy and Climate Plan (NCEP).
These multi-year plans must be submitted in their final form by mid-2024, leaving the new government several months to overhaul the plan submitted by its conservative predecessor.
All policies are “under revision” and the objective is “to step up the efforts,” she said.
Could the country pull its planned coal exit forward? “I believe we must, and we must do it very soon, because only with an end date we can plan,” Zielińska said.
Last year, Poland’s state-owned power utility PGE expressed its support for a 2040 coal exit, drawing an immediate rebuke from the nationalist government, which had set a political deadline of 2049 – one year before the EU is expected to hit its net-zero emissions target.
“We will be looking to set an end date,” Zielińska confirmed, asking for “another six months” to finalise the plan.
“One thing is sure: we are accelerating and stepping up, and Poland is on board with climate efforts with the rest of Europe.”
This article was produced by Euractiv and republished under a content sharing agreement. Read the original here.
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The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
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Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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