People are scared of nuclear in Poland due to the accident in the neighbour country, but it will have to happen. It's sustainable to mine bituminous coal for 20 years. Lignite will stay a bit longer unless solar or thorium will take over.
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I just sorta assumed they didn't care much beyond the pure economics? (Maybe that's what you are saying.)
It's worse than that. Poland's government is giving preferential treatment to coal fired electricity even when other sources are cheaper. They're deliberately obstructing renewables because Poland is already oversupplied with coal and coal-fired electricity. Polish coal mines have repeatedly been unable to turn a profit and rescued only by government subsidies:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-coal-idUSKCN0XC209
Paying extra money to cut emissions is one thing. Paying over-market rates to prop up the filthiest fuel around is really perverse. But it happens, directly and indirectly, wherever there are Coal Jobs to save. I've noticed similar propping in Australia, Germany, India, USA, China, and Czechia too.
If a group of workers is politically weak they get screwed over when they're no longer needed. If the workers are politically powerful they want the rest of society to subsidize their refusal to change. I don't know if anywhere has achieved a happy medium where workers in obsolete industries aren't abandoned by the rest of society yet are willing to walk toward the future instead of digging their heels in against it.
Do you mean Czechoslovakia?
While Czechia is a new name, it's not Czechoslovakia for more than 24 years. It used to be Czech Republic in the meantime (and still is, Czechia is only a shortened name)
I thought they were calling themselves Czechia now but it looks like the announced name change hasn't really caught on yet.
That country has not existed since 1992! Or is there some point I am missing?