On 15 May 2025, an international conference on the coal industry’s transition “from an industrial legend to cutting-edge research for the future” took place at the “Carbonarium” centre in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Poland. The event, organised by EURACOAL and the European Research Executive Agency, brought together key policymakers, research engineers and representatives of the coal industry and regions from across the European Union.

An illustrated report is available here along with presentations and videos.

The conference was hosted by Europe’s largest coking coal company, Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa S.A., to discuss the challenges facing the coal sector, with a particular focus on the roles of science, technology and engineering in the EU’s green transformation and its raw material supply security.

“We don’t turn away from the past, but we are turning it into the future. Europe needs the knowledge that the mining regions have, and the RFCS (Research Fund for Coal and Steel) is the bridge between industrial heritage and green innovation,” said Alicja Krzemień, President of EURACOAL. Prof. Krzemień also pointed out that the RFCS is now a pillar in the development and deployment of modern technologies at former coal mines and power plants, by enabling projects in the fields of land remediation and new energy infrastructure based on green energy sources.

Coal mine methane and the recent EU Methane Regulation were a key focus of the meeting. The REM project on the reduction of methane emissions was presented, this being the largest such project co-financed by the Polish coal mining industry in the history of the RFCS. The ProVAM project, whose main goal is to develop methods and guidelines for the capture of methane from ventilation air, was also presented. The challenges of implementing the EU Methane Regulation were addressed by a representative of the European Commission: “Today, it is crucial that the methodology for measuring methane emissions is uniform across all mine sites. We have thousands of closed mines that need to be monitored. The most difficult is ventilation methane – its concentration is low, but the airflows are huge.”

The event, which was held under the auspices of the Polish Presidency of the European Union, was attended by 200 representatives coming from the Polish Ministry of Industry, the European Commission, and the European Research Executive Agency, as well as research scientists and industrialists from across Europe. The Polish Minister of Industry, Marzena Czarnecka, stressed the important role of Silesia. “Transformation is happening here and now. Silesia is particularly burdened with socio-economic problems. It is our duty to ensure that change is “soft”, well-planned and serves the people.” she said.

During the conference, many other recent and new RFCS projects were presented by project partners: MEMO, METH2GEN, GI-MINE, RECOVERY, GreenJOBS, TRIM4Post-Mining, RAISING, and COFA.