EU-wide plans to close down coal mines and push through its radical environmental plan, Fit for 55, would be disastrous for the bloc’s energy security, an aide of Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has said.
Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski, the former agriculture minister who is currently a presidential advisor, was interviewed by Catholic Radio Maryja. He told listeners that the EU had made a huge mistake by forcing an energy transformation that depended on Russian fossil fuels. The war in Ukraine has revealed the scale of energy dependence on Russia, with Putin exploiting the witless climate policies of Brussels radicals.
Ardanowski says he fears that Russia also sought to attack Ukraine in order to threaten global food security, knowing that by taking over Ukraine’s agricultural capacity, Russia would equip itself with enormous power over world food markets.
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The presidential aide also criticized the drive for clean technologies, as these were, he argued, unstable and unproductive, endangering energy security. These technologies were also often manufactured using fossil fuels, thereby simply transferring the carbon footprint from the West to Asia where the environmental standards are lower.
He noted how the war in Ukraine has made European countries return to coal and argued Poland must follow suit.
“We have to maintain conventional energy. The best example here is Germany, which preached and chastised everyone how we must get off coal and now is opening its coal mines. Not long ago, they were telling us to close down our coal-fired power stations such as Turów,” Ardanowski said.
According to Ardanowski, the implementation of Fit for 55 — a radical proposal to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions across the bloc by 55 percent by 2030 — threatens to turn Europe from a stable and secure exporter of food into an importer dependent on South America. He believes that current climate policies will destroy European farming and was not surprised that farmers in the Netherlands are protesting against it.
