In Mateusz Morawiecki’s new government the responsibilities covering renewable energy sources will be held by Michał Kurtyka, who was appointed Minister of Climate by the Polish President on 15 November 2019.
Michał Kurtyka will head the newly established Ministry of Climate. His responsibilities will include climate issues, formerly held by the Ministry of Environment, and the Clean Air programme. The new ministry will also deal with energy, including renewable energy sources and heating, and – most likely – waste management.
The Ministry of Climate will therefore take over the responsibilities of the former Ministry of Energy.
Establishing the Ministry of Climate is supposed to be a response to the so-called New Green Deal from the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The creation of the ministry is related to ongoing climate change, air pollution issues and environmental requirements imposed by the European Commission onto EU member states.
Michał Kurtyka is a graduate of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and a scholarship holder of the US National Institute of Standards and Technologies. He also studied international economics at the University in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium and acquired his master’s degree at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics. He defended his doctoral dissertation on restructuring of Polish energy companies at the University of Warsaw.
According to gov.pl website, he started his career in administration in the Office of the Committee for European Integration, in the team of Minister Jan Kułakowski, responsible for conducting accession negotiations with the European Union, where he headed the analytical team and was directly responsible for the field of energy and transport. Later, Michał Kurtyka took part in modernisation of many Polish companies, supporting their adaptation to the challenges of European and global markets.
In 2016 he became Secretary of State in the Ministry of Energy, where his responsibilities included technological development and implementation of innovations in the energy sector as well as implementation of climate and energy policy in the fuel and gas sector. His duties also included supervision of the state’s participation in Poland’s largest energy companies in the oil and gas sector, such as Orlen, Lotos and PGNiG. He was the author of “The Electromobility Development Plan”, and later he supervised the creation of the Electromobility and Alternative Fuels Act.
In 2018 Michał Kurtyka started working at the Ministry of Environment, where he became deputy minister. He was also appointed as Government Representative for the Presidency of COP24 – the United Nations Climate Summit in Poland. In December 2019 he will chair the climate negotiations on the first day of COP summit in Madrid. He is recognized as an expert in climate protection, successfully participating in international negotiations.