The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted in 2015. The United Nations framework does not directly include raw materials in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The mining industry has a great impact not only for the environment but also for its stakeholders, both from the nearest and the most remote surrounding. As such, the mining industry has the opportunity and potential to both positively and negatively impact on all seventeen SDGs. The introduction of the EU directive on the disclosure of non-financial data has a great impact on the reporting of sustainable development reporting. Additionally, in March 2020, the European Commission published the EU Taxonomy. With regard to the current geopolitical situation, some European Union members, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, have taken the decision to open or re-open of their coal-fired plants. Admittedly, these countries underline that the inclusion of coal in their power industry is only temporary and limited to a well-defined period of time. The implementation of the SDGs should be partially important in the case of mining, the activities of which involve the extraction of various types of mineral resources, especially non-renewable resources. This raises two fundamental research questions; what is the actual level of the reporting of SDGs in the polish mining industry, and if the EU Taxonomy Regulations will increase the reporting of SDGs in Polish mining?

The Polish political transformation of 1989 brought significant changes not only on the political and social levels but also on the economic level. The Polish economy, which until then had been a centrally planned economy, had to be rapidly changed into a free market economy. As a result of this, a lot of areas of the economy had to be transformed including the mining industry, especially hard-coal mining. In 1990, there were seventy-one mines in operation in Poland, employing nearly 400,000 people. The process of decommissioning these mines, which continues to this day, began in 1994. Walbrzych coal mines were among the first to be liquidated. Poland has long been dependent on coal for energy production, but the country is facing increasing pressure in the transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy sources in order to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change in order to fulfil EU climate policy assumptions. Civil society organizations in Poland were associated with the political transformation, as the changes in the system has opened the doors for the social participation in decision-making processes. Civil society organizations in Poland have been actively pushing for policies and initiatives that promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and the phasing out of coal. However, it should be underlined that the role of civil society in energy transformation is crucial as on the one hand, it should be an advocate of change, but on the other hand, civil society has to take an active part in the discussion on the challenges of the transformation, such a change in the employment structure which is an inevitable consequence of the energy transition. The scope of the paper is to provide a set of tools for the civil society participating in energy transformation processes.

Anthropopression has become a factor of many negative environmental changes, including climate change. As a response to these changes, the European Union (EU) has already cut the GHG emission by 24% compared to 1990 levels. However, the goals are far greater since the Paris Agreement states that global warming should be kept down to near 2 degrees Celsius, ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. By 2050, the proportion of global energy produced from coal must decline by between 73 and 97 percent to accomplish this objective. The global employment structure would definitely be affected by this decarbonization in the long run. In this paper, we concentrate on a preliminary evaluation of Poland’s future job market. As Poland’s economy is still driven by coal, energy conversion will have a significant influence on the country’s economy. However, decarbonization is both an opportunity and a challenge for the future labor market. As per research findings, the transition to renewable power would be a net job creator with the potential for new quality workers in the renewable energy industry both directly in the construction and installation of renewable power plants and indirectly in the industry that supplies the items for the system. According to the preliminary investigation of Poland’s future labor market, the future of Polish energy is the cohesion of clean energy sources and decentralized energy, while offshore wind energy in the Baltic Sea can play an important role in the national energy transition, as well as contributing to the country’s energy security and reducing environmental pollution.