Europe’s last coal – a photo essay

Coal dust is fine; it seeps into the pores of the skin. That is why a thin black line permanently traces the outline of Rafal Dzuman’s eyes, as if he were wearing makeup. Team leader of the G-2 mining crew, 49-year-old Rafal Dzuman has been descending every day to 700 metres below ground for at least 20 years, at the Murcki-Staszic coalmine in southern Poland. Opened in the mid-17th century and today owned by the Polish giant PGG, the mine sits on the southern outskirts of Katowice, and still extracts about 23,000 tonnes of coal a day.

Katowice, Poland: Miners exit the lift after working in the coal-mining tunnels at the Murcki-Staszic Mine (PGG Group), located on the southern outskirts of the city. Coal mining began here in 1657; today, the mine’s daily production stands at about 23,000 tonnes

Rafal Dzuman, a 49-year-old coal miner at the Murcki-Staszic mine (PGG Group), poses for a photograph after his shift. The mine’s reserves are estimated to last about 50 years

Coal miners step out of the lift and head towards the changing rooms and showers. The dust is particularly fine, and even though a hot shower lasts several minutes, the coal can sometimes leave indelible stains on his skin

Katowice – once called Stalinogród – is the most important city in Upper Silesia, for centuries the coal-mining heartland of the old continent and today the last district in the European Union where hard coal is still extracted. Here in southern Poland there are still schools training young miners, and 80,000 people descend underground every day to extract thousands of tonnes of black rock – the same rock still used to produce half of the country’s electricity. But Upper Silesia is also the most complex laboratory of an already deeply complex European energy transition.

Coal stored in the open air, ready to be loaded on to train cars

Two students eat their lunch in front of a large poster depicting a mining tunnel with a mine car in the cafeteria of the Faculty of Mining, Safety Engineering, and Industrial Automation at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice

The decarbonisation decision made in Brussels makes no exceptions, and within a few decades, the Polish coal economy will have to give way to a “climate-neutral” model. The target date is 2049, though it is likely that the transition could accelerate and coal could be abandoned entirely by 2035.

Luszowice, Poland: solar panels in the countryside east of Katowice. The plant was developed by Regesta, a Polish company specialising in renewable energy sources and power generation

Tarnowskie Góry, Poland: Three friends take a dip in the 6C water of the Black Trout Adit. The tunnel is part of a network of drainage tunnels in the former local silver and lead mine, now a Unesco world heritage site

Students and teachers crowd the entrance to the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra before a concert for schools. Built on the site of a former coalmine, the redbrick building’s exterior resembles the public housing in the nearby mining district of Nikiszowiec

Students attend a concert by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Today, no new exploration is permitted and no new mines may be opened. On one hand, existing mines survive only thanks to substantial state subsidies – extracting coal requires digging ever deeper, sometimes beyond 1,000 metres – while on the other, the price of coal extracted abroad is falling, where labour costs are lower. It can therefore become economically attractive to buy it elsewhere: Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, and, until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Russia.

Two workers at the foundry of the Wujek coalmine, which is still in operation and managed by Polska Grupa Górnicza in Katowice. In 1981, nine striking miners were killed by the army during clashes aimed at suppressing industrial action at the mine, an event that is known as the Pacification of Wujek

Miners’ work clothes from the Wujek coalmine, which is still in operation and managed by PGG in Katowice

That, at least, was the calculation made before the conflict in the Middle East erupted and before oil and gas prices began to rise. What will happen now? In Poland, questions pile up: will the billions of euros from the European just transition fund be enough to transform a mono-industrial region into a diversified economy? Will they manage to redeploy the workers who, between active mines – around 20 – and the supply chain, still number more than 200,000? And above all, could the current geopolitical uncertainty somehow persuade Poland and the European Union to slow the pace of a process that appears unavoidable?

Zabrze, a southern district of the city, famous for its mining industry. In the background is the smokestack of the Fortum Silesia power plant, which is still partially coal-fired

The Pogoń sports arena, a building originally belonging to a nearby coalmine that was donated in 1987 to the Pogoń Zabrze handball team, which at the time represented the mining industry

In 2025, the world extracted more coal than in any previous year: more than 9bn tonnes, much of it in China, India and Indonesia. Coal is a polluting energy source that contributes to global heating, but it is also cheap, and today generates one-third of the world’s electricity. Poland extracts a mere 85m tonnes, less than 1% of the global total, yet for Upper Silesia, giving up coal carries the weight of an identity trauma as much as an economic one. “On one hand, we will lose a centuries-old tradition and a stable energy source,” says Jacek Nowak, geologist at the Silesian University of Technology, “and on the other we will continue to buy coal where extraction happens in a predatory way, from countries that respect neither environmental standards nor workers’ rights.”

Tourists dressed as miners simulate the work of cutting logs 350 metres underground in the Guido coalmine, founded in 1855 by the wealthy German Guido Henckel and closed in 1960. Today, it is a popular museum in Zabrze

Two young girls visit the Saturn Museum in Czeladź, dedicated to mining that takes its name from the former local coalmine Saturn. Two visitors read up on the historical information in a room at the Museum of the History of Katowice

Tourists photograph an underground tunnel during a boat tour of Queen Luiza Mine. Founded in 1791 under Prussian rule, the coalmine faced problems with water infiltration, and many of its tunnels have since been flooded. Two women wait for a guitar concert to begin in a hall located in a former coalmine that now houses the Kopalnia Sztuki (Art Mine) association in Zabrze

The European Green Deal is under way, and as power plants abandon coal in favour of gas, two-thirds of the mines have already been closed or repurposed. In Zabrze, the former Guido and Queen Luiza mines have become museums where visitors explore the tunnels dressed as real miners.