Poland: Energy transition

Poland’s transition market now has real scale. At the end of 2025, renewables reached 37.8 GW, more than 50% of installed power capacity, and supplied 31.41% of annual generation.

Solar PV is the largest construction segment, with a cumulative capacity of 24.8 GW. Onshore wind, above 10.5 GW, remains active but is increasingly shaped by planning and siting constraints. Offshore wind has moved into delivery: Poland’s first competitive auction in December 2025 awarded 3.435 GW under 25-year support contracts.

BESS is the fastest-growing adjacent market because it’s increasingly central to balancing and grid strategy. Biogas and renewable gases are also emerging from a smaller base.

The market offers breadth across technologies, but grid access is now as commercially important as generation demand.

Contracting practice has adapted pragmatically. Most projects use bespoke EPC or EPCM structures, sometimes FIDIC-based, but almost always rewritten for lender requirements, permitting risk and technology interfaces.

Offshore and hybrid projects increasingly use multi-contract packaging, separating OEM supply, balance-of-plant, installation, grid scope and O&M, supported by direct agreements and step-in rights.

The main risk is not a Poland-specific weakness in contract form; it’s fragmentation in delivery. Delay or underperformance may sit in the gaps between contractors, permitting milestones and grid operator works. That makes interface discipline critical. Better contracts now contain clearer milestones, more detailed employer’s requirements, targeted relief for grid and permitting delay and tailored change-in-law provisions. The market is bankable and familiar to international participants. The issue is whether risk allocation stays workable once program pressure arrives.

Newer technologies create both technical and legal uncertainty. For BESS, the key issues include degradation profiles, augmentation obligations, software controls, cyber resilience and the quality of revenue assumptions where the business case depends on ancillary services or merchant spreads.

For offshore wind and hybrid projects, weather windows, marine logistics and package coordination are equally important. These issues matter contractually because innovation will only be financed if it’s translated into enforceable warranties, testing regimes and replacement obligations.

Parties should focus more heavily on acceptance testing, data rights, interface assumptions and warranty back-to-back protection than they might on a conventional photovoltaic project. They should also avoid optimistic modelling and preserve flexibility for staged commissioning and disciplined change control. The mitigation is straightforward: proven technology, experienced counterparties, hard-edged performance metrics and insurance that works across construction and early operations.

Delivery pressure is being driven principally by supply chain and grid dependency. Long lead items such as transformers, switchgear, export cable components and battery systems can still control the program.

At the same time, sanctions, security concerns and financing conditions are narrowing the pool of acceptable suppliers, not only in public procurement but also in sponsor-driven private projects. The less visible pressure point is energization. Even where the plant itself completes on time, commercial operation may still depend on connection or reinforcement works performed by a Transmission System Operator or Distribution System Operator. In a congested system, that external dependency is material. Contractors and owners need substitute sourcing rights, realistic float, early procurement discipline, tested compliance assumptions, and express contractual treatment of third-party grid delay, including time relief and, where justified, cost consequences.

The most significant dispute drivers beyond new technology are grid access, curtailment and regulatory transition. One market assessment reported 74 GW of declined connection requests in 2024, illustrating the scale of congestion confronting new projects. Curtailment is also no longer marginal: renewable curtailment reached 731 GWh in 2024, and nearly 590 GWh was reported for the first five months of 2025. That exposure matters economically, especially where compensation is limited or slow.

The 2026 Grid Act is intended to release capacity and discourage speculative projects through tighter milestones and stronger financial commitments, but those same mechanisms may generate disputes in projects already underway if they alter the development pathway midstream.

Other flashpoints include planning objections, environmental conditions, land rights, negative pricing exposure and disagreement over whether a regulatory or operator instruction qualifies for relief. The mitigation point is simple: draft specifically for curtailment, connection delay, permit dependencies and revenue-impact change.

Stakeholders should act now on four fronts:

• First, secure grid strategy early, because in Poland connection has become the threshold between a credible project and a stranded one.
• Secondly, treat contract architecture as a commercial tool: the strongest projects use bankable bespoke forms, robust interface management and relief mechanisms calibrated to grid, permitting and technology risk.
• Thirdly, build procurement resilience and local delivery capability, particularly in offshore wind where supply chain visibility and local participation increasingly matter to sponsors, regulators and lenders.
• Finally, invest in dispute prevention by aligning development, financing, construction, O&M and grid documents from the outset.

Poland is an attractive jurisdiction: the policy direction is clear, the pipeline is deep and sophisticated international investors and contractors are active. While the market is maturing, success will favor parties that price grid and interface risk realistically and move early on connection, equipment and counterparties.