Biomass as a Component of Poland’s Energy Transition

Against the backdrop of accelerating decarbonization and a shifting national power mix, this study assesses the significance of biomass as a stabilizing component of Poland’s transition toward renewables. The objective was to identify and evaluate the role of biomass in Poland’s energy transition in 2019-2023, with a short-term, trend-based projection to 2026. The analysis uses Statistics Poland (GUS) data, including the SHARES methodology for gross final energy consumption (GFEC). Descriptive and comparative statistics, a sectoral decomposition of GFEC, and OLS linear regression for “biomass family” aggregates in electricity and heat (solid biofuels, biogas, renewable municipal waste, bioliquids) were applied to derive point forecasts for 2024-2026. Results show that the share of RES in primary energy supply rose from 19.4% to 24.5% alongside a decline in total primary energy supply, while electricity generation from RES increased from 25.46 to 45.85 TWh, accompanied by a threefold expansion of dependable capacity, especially in PV and wind. Sectorally, GFEC shares in 2023 reached 25.7% in power, 20.3% in heating/ cooling, and 6.0% in transport, revealing an asymmetric transition. Biomass emerged as a key, dispatchable pillar on the heat side: total heat output from biomass grew by roughly 40% in 2019-2023 and accounted for about 89% of RES heat in 2023. By contrast, electricity from the “biomass family” increased modestly and stabilized; trend extrapolation suggests near-stagnation in power and continued gains in heat through 2026. These findings imply that sustaining and safely increasing biomass’s contribution requires robust supply chains and sustainability safeguards, grid and storage investments, and a policy rebalancing from power alone toward district heating and biogas/biomethane, while acknowledging the limitations of short time series and potential non-additivity across GFEC sectors under SHARES.