Qualifying Coal: Materiality and the Transformation of Import Supply Chains in Poland

While public debate has largely framed coal in terms of extraction and phase‐out, less attention has been paid to its material properties and its role in shaping international supply chains. The 2022 embargo on Russian coal disrupted cross‐border supplies, forcing importers and households to rely on new coal from overseas markets. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between June 2022 and September 2023 in the Warmia region of northern Poland, this article examines how the need for specific coal parameters rendered some alternative supply routes viable while excluding others, thereby reshaping the import market. The arrival of unfamiliar coal varieties differing in moisture content, calorific value, grain size and combustion properties required evaluation of the new material and comparison with the old. The article shows how this evaluation extended beyond sites of exchange or practices of storage and use. Through processes of testing and comparison, coal is qualified as a tradable good. This qualification is distributed along supply chains, unfolding across sites of circulation rather than being confined to the product itself. By foregrounding the material differences and the practical work required to accommodate them, the qualification of coal sets in motion the transformation of import supply chains. The paper contributes to research on the materiality of energy and to studies of market qualification by showing how heterogeneity enables circulation, shaping which resource flows and logistics routes are rendered viable under conditions of disruption.