The conference was organised by the European Fund for the Development of Polish Villages, Agro Promotion SA and the Consulate General of Hungary in Gdańsk.

Green Deal

The Polish Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Grzegorz Puda, who opened the event together with the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture Istvan Nagy, pointed out that agriculture is a sector very strongly dependent on climatic conditions and sensitive to climatic changes and anomalies. At the same time, he stressed that both Poland and Hungary are among the countries with the lowest emissions in Europe. In Poland it is nearly 2.1 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per hectare and in Hungary less than 1.4 tonnes per hectare. Unsustainable agriculture based on industrial production methods causes a significant increase in these emissions. In EU countries where such agriculture predominates, emissions are even higher than 10 t per hectare of agricultural area.

- The Green Deal brings with it a number of environmental and climate challenges to encourage farmers to get involved in curbing climate change, the Polish minister stressed, referring to the new EU proposals.

- It will be difficult to meet new challenges without the right knowledge and awareness of the purpose. In all EU countries, the Common Agricultural Policy Strategy is being developed to include both the protection of agricultural production space and the introduction of climate-friendly practices. It is worth exchanging experiences, especially as agriculture in Hungary and Poland is very similar, also in terms of the size of farms, added Minister Grzegorz Puda.

RES

The head of the Polish Ministry of Agriculture pointed out that from the agricultural point of view, the most important RES technologies are those which, apart from producing energy from agricultural waste, can directly support agriculture in achieving climate and environmental goals.

- Therefore, we pay special attention to hydropower and agricultural biogas plants, which are still underestimated, the Minister said.

According to Minister Puda, renewable energy sources will not replace large-scale, conventional power engineering. However, in rural areas they can significantly assist the operation of the national power system. That is why for years the Ministry of Agriculture has been putting great emphasis on solutions that would enable the sustainable development of distributed prosumer energy.

- We believe that local energy production for own needs is a good direction for development to effectively use all existing local RES resources such as agricultural waste, agri-food processing and food trade, water, wind, sun or geothermal sources, said Minister Grzegorz Puda.

The head of the Ministry of Agriculture also pointed out that what is important for final customers is the value of their energy bills.

- It should be borne in mind that some technologies, which are generally considered to be the cheapest, may turn out to be much more expensive than it would seem after adding the costs of energy processing for sale, transmission, provision of reserve capacity and the necessity to store energy, Minister Puda pointed out.

Energy cooperatives

According to Minister Grzegorz Puda, it is very important that energy production from RES is adapted to local needs, based on local resources whose consumption will not upset the balance and will ensure local development.

- I am convinced that it is only with this approach to the energy transition that any barriers to the sustainable development of energy based on agricultural biogas and similar RES can be overcome. This is what the solutions dedicated to energy cooperatives are intended to achieve, the minister said.

He emphasised that this form of cooperation allows the efficient use of all locally available RES resources on the one hand and the economic size of the plants on the other. Thanks to its local character, it also prevents excessive concentration.