Two floating LNG terminals due to be moored in the Bay of Gdańsk will lift Poland’s import capacity to roughly 50 billion cubic metres of gas a year, opening the way for the country to become a hub for Central and North-Eastern Europe. Speakers at an Energy Days panel in Katowice argue that gas will keep power systems running for decades and call it a „permanently transitional” fuel.
The debate, titled „Gas in the new energy security architecture”, took place on 30 September 2026 in Katowice and was moderated by Marek Kamiński, a partner at EY. It covered import infrastructure, biomethane, gas engines, hydrogen blending and the physical and cyber protection of pipelines.
The floating storage and regasification unit was launched in May 2026 at the South Korean shipyard HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and will be moored in the Bay of Gdańsk. Together with the second terminal, it will raise Poland’s import capacity to about 50 bcm per year. GAZ-SYSTEM is expanding the transmission network at the same time, and the surplus capacity that emerges could turn the country into a regional gas hub.
Biomethane, not hydrogen, is the near-term answer
Remigiusz Adamiak, director of the strategy department at Polska Spółka Gazownictwa, argues that gas should be treated as complementary to other energy sources rather than as a temporary bridge. In the power sector it acts as a peak, reserve and balancing source that is hard to replace with anything else today.
Two opposing trends are visible on the market. Interest in new gas connections among individual households is falling, with about 40,000 new connections expected this year. The gap is filled by professional power generation, whose gas volumes are far larger. That trend is expected to hold for the next five to ten years, while the network is gradually greened.
Biomethane sits at the centre of that greening. It can be produced in many dispersed sources that run year-round, more than 8,000 hours a year, compared with photovoltaics working roughly 1,000 hours, or about one eighth of the year. It has the same properties as natural gas, so it can be injected into the existing grid without changes. PSG has already connected two biomethane plants to its network – one in 2025 and an agricultural installation in Komorowo this September.
– In the perspective of ten years, even 10 percent of the gas in our network may come from green sources. In our opinion, that is an absolutely realistic target – said Remigiusz Adamiak.
Gas engines, hydrogen tests and the capacity market
Krzysztof Łokaj, senior manager for growth and development at Wärtsilä Energy, says gas will increasingly serve as a supporting and balancing source as renewables take a larger share. Gas engines in Europe already work in this role, operating 2,000-4,000 hours a year and starting within minutes when renewable output drops or demand spikes.
– We have to remember that we are not able to quickly replace gas with another fuel in the power sector. It must be present. In Europe this is understood even by those who imagined that the power system could be based solely on renewables and energy storage – said Krzysztof Łokaj.
He notes that somebody once described gas as a „permanently transitional” fuel, which he considers a very apt phrase. Old coal cogeneration should be gradually replaced by flexible gas cogeneration that runs when both the power and district heating systems need it. Today’s support schemes reward long, continuous operation, while the future system will need flexibility.
Wärtsilä is already testing hydrogen. Final trials of an engine running on 100 percent hydrogen and feeding power into the grid are under way in Spain, while standard gas engines can already burn up to 25 percent hydrogen without modification. Preparing plants technically – extra installations, piping and compressors – remains a challenge, but the biggest barrier is the lack of hydrogen supply.
Sławomir Żygowski, country executive at GE Vernova Poland, points to data centres as a new driver of demand alongside electrification. Gas stays attractive because it is relatively easy to obtain and gas-fired units are less technologically complicated to build than many other large power projects. Until new technologies and nuclear capacity, including SMRs, mature, gas should remain the key fuel for balancing and integrating renewables.
– If public procurement procedures in Poland are not streamlined, projects will drag on and their costs will grow. There may also be situations where clients are surprised by the absence of bids in specific tenders – warned Sławomir Żygowski.
A new capacity mechanism is needed to keep such projects bankable. That system would pay a plant not only for the electricity it produces but for being ready to deliver when the grid needs it. The current mechanism is designed to 2030, and the government is working on one for 2031-2040. A global gas power renaissance, with rising demand in the United States and the Middle East, is tightening competition for scarce components such as turbines and generators.
Protecting steel and data
GAZ-SYSTEM is investing in protection alongside transmission capacity. Every day brings new vulnerabilities and risks, requiring constant work on safeguards. Dariusz Bogdan, a member of the company’s management board, says security is developed where it is genuinely needed, without generating excessive redundancy costs.
Physical protection covers monitoring of infrastructure including Baltic Pipe, anti-drone solutions and trials of linear detection using fibre-optic cables laid along the pipeline. The company uses drones to monitor its assets, cooperating with the Territorial Defence Forces and other military formations, and draws on satellite imagery.
– The National Gas Dispatch remains the central point for managing the transmission system, but the SOC is beginning to match it in organisational and equipment terms – explained Dariusz Bogdan.
Cybersecurity is the second strategic area. GAZ-SYSTEM runs its own Security Operations Centre, where specialists watch systems around the clock, analyse potential threats and respond to attack attempts, limiting their effects. Spending on cyber protection is growing fast and becoming one of the largest costs of infrastructure security. The company also trains staff responsible for physical and cyber protection.
Sebastian Markowski, director of the energy and gas division at Asseco Poland, says cyberattacks have become an everyday reality for large firms, so security is no longer only an IT department’s job. It has to be viewed across the whole chain of systems, devices, technologies, processes and people, since any participant in corporate processes can be a target.
– Asseco, as a software producer, has dealt with this area since the beginning of its operations. We use modern technologies, but we build the application layer of systems serving gas companies ourselves. That gives us control over the source code, how it is tested, and over security and penetration tests. We also simulate attacks to check the resilience of systems – said Sebastian Markowski.
That approach amounts to IT local content in practice, which the Asseco representative considers particularly important in an energy sector undergoing intense transformation and constantly adapting its systems to the specifics of the Polish market.
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. Materiały prasowe / GAZ-SYSTEM
