Who can breathe?

How do communities in coal-dependent regions navigate the politics of energy transition? Across the EU, the phase-out of coal is generating new conflicts between economic interests, environmental imperatives, and community identities, exposing deep tensions in how the costs and benefits of decarbonisation are distributed. Poland offers a critical case through which to address that gap directly: in little more than a decade, coal’s share of electricity generation has fallen from over 80% to around 52%, yet this aggregate shift conceals sharp divergences in the pace, politics, and social consequences of transition across regions and localities. 
The existing literature on environmental politics in Central and Eastern Europe explains such variation in terms of the electoral success of Green-Alternative-Libertarian (GAL) versus Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist (TAN) parties, combined with the efficacy of civil society organisations and their salience within policy arenas. Recent scholarship, however, suggests that progressive environmental outcomes may be achievable even under conditions of democratic backsliding and far-right governance, indicating that political alignment is neither necessary nor sufficient on its own and that other variables determine the pace and character of transition.
Through a structured comparison of two Polish lignite-dependent cities - Konin (Eastern Wielkopolska) and Bełchatów (Łódź region) - held under identical national conditions, we apply process tracing to identify the causal mechanisms through which divergent transition outcomes are produced. Drawing on elite interviews with local officials, trade union leaders, civil society actors, and energy sector representatives, supplemented by documentary and qualitative discourse analysis, we propose that transition outcomes are shaped by the interaction of four factors: (i) local political alignment; (ii) local state capacity; (iii) the political economy of coal asset ownership; and (iv) the organisational and coalition-building capacity of civil society, its ability to produce bridge brokers, integrating frames, and collective political subjectivity around transition as shared opportunity. Where these factors combine favourably, meaningful transition progress is realised; where one or more is absent, transition stalls even where political conditions are ostensibly supportive.

Alan Fagan is a comparative political scientist at King's College London.