Europe’s last coal – a photo essay

Coal dust is fine; it seeps into the pores of the skin. That is why a thin black line permanently traces the outline of Rafal Dzuman’s eyes, as if he were wearing makeup. Team leader of the G-2 mining crew, 49-year-old Rafal Dzuman has been descending every day to 700 metres below ground for at least 20 years, at the Murcki-Staszic coalmine in southern Poland. Opened in the mid-17th century and today owned by the Polish giant PGG, the mine sits on the southern outskirts of Katowice, and still extracts about 23,000 tonnes of coal a day.

Katowice – once called Stalinogród – is the most important city in Upper Silesia, for centuries the coal-mining heartland of the old continent and today the last district in the European Union where hard coal is still extracted. Here in southern Poland there are still schools training young miners, and 80,000 people descend underground every day to extract thousands of tonnes of black rock – the same rock still used to produce half of the country’s electricity. But Upper Silesia is also the most complex laboratory of an already deeply complex European energy transition.

The decarbonisation decision made in Brussels makes no exceptions, and within a few decades, the Polish coal economy will have to give way to a “climate-neutral” model. The target date is 2049, though it is likely that the transition could accelerate and coal could be abandoned entirely by 2035.

Today, no new exploration is permitted and no new mines may be opened. On one hand, existing mines survive only thanks to substantial state subsidies – extracting coal requires digging ever deeper, sometimes beyond 1,000 metres – while on the other, the price of coal extracted abroad is falling, where labour costs are lower. It can therefore become economically attractive to buy it elsewhere: Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, and, until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Russia.

That, at least, was the calculation made before the conflict in the Middle East erupted and before oil and gas prices began to rise. What will happen now? In Poland, questions pile up: will the billions of euros from the European just transition fund be enough to transform a mono-industrial region into a diversified economy? Will they manage to redeploy the workers who, between active mines – around 20 – and the supply chain, still number more than 200,000? And above all, could the current geopolitical uncertainty somehow persuade Poland and the European Union to slow the pace of a process that appears unavoidable?

In 2025, the world extracted more coal than in any previous year: more than 9bn tonnes, much of it in China, India and Indonesia. Coal is a polluting energy source that contributes to global heating, but it is also cheap, and today generates one-third of the world’s electricity. Poland extracts a mere 85m tonnes, less than 1% of the global total, yet for Upper Silesia, giving up coal carries the weight of an identity trauma as much as an economic one. “On one hand, we will lose a centuries-old tradition and a stable energy source,” says Jacek Nowak, geologist at the Silesian University of Technology, “and on the other we will continue to buy coal where extraction happens in a predatory way, from countries that respect neither environmental standards nor workers’ rights.”

The European Green Deal is under way, and as power plants abandon coal in favour of gas, two-thirds of the mines have already been closed or repurposed. In Zabrze, the former Guido and Queen Luiza mines have become museums where visitors explore the tunnels dressed as real miners.

In Mikołów, a mine has been transformed into the Barbara Experimental mine, a research centre specialising in the study of extraction techniques and risks associated with explosive gases, particularly methane.

Some mines have become art galleries – such as the Wilson Shaft gallery in Katowice – while others have been turned into golf courses, such as the Armada golf club in Bytom, and one of them – the former Wieczorek mine – is to become a hub dedicated to hi-tech, creativity and gaming. “But if the transition imposed by Brussels is too fast,” says Arkadiusz Sienczak of the miners’ union ZZG, “we will not manage to offset the losses in the mining sector with new jobs.”

Coal has shaped the history of Silesia, transforming the landscape and influencing generations of families. Some local schools – such as the technical school complex in Rybnik – continue to train the miners of the future. “They are aware workers,” says headteacher Piotr Tokarz, “knowledgable about the latest mining technologies but also informed on issues such as safety and sustainable extraction.” At one time, more than 140,000 people worked in the coalmines of Rybnik; today 6,000 remain. The job of a miner no longer guarantees a long-term future and is considered physically demanding: retirement comes at 50 after 25 years of service, 15 of them underground. Despite this, around 20 young people have chosen to become miners.

Among them is Wiktor Dudek, 17 years old, hard hat and green-and-black checked shirt, who, together with his classmates, attends lessons in a tunnel-laboratory beneath the school. Wiktor does not speak English, but I noticed that during lessons, he does not speak Polish either. “We don’t need English down in the mine,” he says, “and we don’t need Polish either — our language as miners is Silesian. It’s a matter of tradition. Of course, the outlook for us young people is not rosy, but my grandfather was a miner and so was my father, and that is why I will be one too.”