The article presents the challenges faced by the hard coal mining sector in Poland. The biggest
challenge results from a decrease in the demand for coal, which was triggered mainly by the climate
policy, including the tightening of environmental standards and an increase in the efficiency of generating
units. The fundamental model of the MRÓWKA domestic coal market has been described.
The model allows for determining the marginal price of a given fuel for a given generating unit in
the system and the optimal mix of fuels to meet the energy demand. The results of the model calculations
for the baseline and alternative scenarios were presented. It has been shown that the optimal
distribution of coal mining capacities promotes the import of the discussed fuel in the north-eastern
part of the country and that the individual customer valuation leads to a decrease in the competitiveness
of the units located in the central-western part of the country. The paper also discusses the
potential impact of the domestic oversupply on the balance sheet and the price of coal. According
to the obtained results and the basic laws of economics, an oversupply of coal leads to a decrease
in prices. For the analyzed variants, the dependence of prices was estimated at PLN 0.0308 / GJ for
every million tons of the oversupply. The fall in prices is largely due to the fuel supply to units located
close to ports or railway border crossings. Based on the presented arguments it can be concluded
that the maximization of financial result from the extraction of coal should be based on an analysis
taking incremental changes in fuel prices into account.