Our successes - Polish Smog Alert

The first smog alert was established in Krakow, in 2013. The actions taken by Kraków Smog Alert have contributed to raising public awareness of air quality issues and their importance.
Consequently, in 2016 Kraków became the first Polish city to ban solid fuel heating in low power boilers. The ban came into force in 2019.

Kraków Smog Alert was soon joined by a network of Local Smog Alerts. Thanks to their joint efforts:

public awareness of the smog problem has increased,
the situation has reached a breaking point, which forced the politicians to start working on changes in the law and the government announced air improvement as one of its main priorities,

nobody denies the air pollution problem in Poland any more, which was a common practice only a few years ago,
the issue of air pollution receives wide coverage in local and national media

SOS Tomasz Gotfryd

sos_tomaszgotfryd_03

sos_tomaszgotfryd_04

sos_tomaszgotfryd_05

sos_tomaszgotfryd_06

sos_tomaszgotfryd_07

sos_tomaszgotfryd_08

sos_tomaszgotfryd_09

sos_tomaszgotfryd_10

sos_tomaszgotfryd_11

Raised public awareness has translated into changes in law.

In January 2016 Kraków became the first city in Poland to introduce a ban on solid fuel heating in low power boilers (coming into force in 2019).
To date anti-smog resolutions were passed by the authorities of 11 out of 16 regions in Poland. This means that over half of the country is covered by anti-smog provisions to be enforced within the coming decade. These laws set time limits by which all residents have to replace their old solid fuel based boilers and stoves.

In 2017 the national government introduced emission standards for low power, solid fuel boilers, stopping the sales of the most polluting coal boilers.
In 2018 the national government introduced quality standards for coal, limiting the sales of coal waste.
In 2018 a number of financial measures to support air quality improvement were launched, including a 25-billion-EUR subsidy and soft-loan programme supporting boiler replacement and thermal renovation of single family houses and a tax relief for these investments.

Polish Smog Alert activists are engaged in the implementation of the LIFE programme, under which a network of eco-managers was created and local authorities were involved in the fight against air pollution.

PSA has set up an online portal which, as the first such portal in our country, focuses on air pollution, climate change and plastic crisis. SmogLab.pl is visited by over 100,000 users every month and over 1 million people annually.