All aspects of TAURON Group’s operations take into account the impact on the local environment, as well as the quality and price of the products and services that it is offering to the customers. TAURON Group’s customers are also the beneficiaries of the Group’s efforts related to protecting the quality of the natural environment and the way its resources are managed.
The Group’s great assets include its natural resources that constitute a part of the natural capital that it uses to provide customers with its products and services. Water, land and air are resources that are impacted by TAURON Group’s business operations. With these resources in mind every effort is made to reduce this impact.
TAURON Group strives to convert 100% of its combustion and mining waste into products.
TAURON Group’s coal mining assets play an important role in the value chain. They are its first link, and thanks to the investment projects underway, they are to guarantee the supply of suitable quality coal to TAURON Group’s generating units. Currently, the Group is taking steps to transition its energy mix, which is associated with the reduction of the share of conventional energy based on coal in favor of the development of renewable energy sources.
Beside the important role of coal, water is an important natural resource for TAURON Group, as it is, among others, widely used in the electricity production processes. By using closed cooling water circuits at TAURON Group’s power plants, the consumption of this resource is limited to the necessary minimum. TAURON Group has also taken steps to recover this resource through mine drainage processes and reuse the water recovered from the mines in its technological processes.
In addition to the conventional coal-fired generating units, TAURON Group also uses dropping water’s energy and wind energy to produce electricity. TAURON Group is operating 34 hydroelectric power plants located in the south of Poland and 9 wind farms, located mainly in the northern part of the country.
Solar radiation is also an important natural resource. TAURON PV program is being implemented at TAURON Group, under which further installations will be built, among others on land that has been rehabilitated or requires rehabilitation as a result of long-term industrial activity (mainly at the sites of former power plants or furnace waste landfills).
TAURON Group also has a limestone mine in its asset portfolio, where it acquires, among others, sorbent for flue gas desulphurization at conventional power plants. The raw material obtained is also widely used outside the energy sector – it is used in agriculture, steel making, construction, lime, cement, sugar and road building industries.
In the long term, the impact of TAURON Group’s business operations on natural resources will be declining, both due to the need to meet the expected tightening of the environmental standards and climate policy, investments in new, low- and zero-emission energy sources, and due to the permanent shutdown of inefficient conventional units.