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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s first offshore wind farm has begun to deliver electricity. Once complete, the facility, known as Baltic Power, will generate 4 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually, enough to meet around 3% of Poland’s demand, powering the equivalent of 1.5 million homes.

The project is part of ambitious plans by Poland to develop wind farms along its Baltic Sea coastline. The government aims for around a fifth of the country’s electricity to come from offshore wind by 2040, as Poland moves away from reliance on coal and towards renewables and nuclear.

💡 Baltic Power będzie produkować energię dla ponad 1,5 mln gospodarstw domowych.

To skala porównywalna z łączną liczbą gospodarstw w Warszawie, Poznaniu i Trójmieście. Energia z Bałtyku oznacza więcej czystego prądu w polskim systemie i większą niezależność energetyczną kraju. pic.twitter.com/QRV9t1cAFw

— Kancelaria Premiera (@PremierRP) July 10, 2026

“This is a technological victory for all those who believed that Poland could be among the leading countries in modern energy,” declared Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a ceremony announcing the first electricity from the Baltic Power facility.

He said that offshore wind would help protect Poland’s energy security and sovereignty by providing power that is “independent of geopolitical turbulence in these highly uncertain times”.

Tusk noted that the energy crises sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Poland and other EU countries stopped importing Russian gas and oil , and the current crisis in the Middle East, which has prevented oil and gas exports from the region, highlight how important it is to have a diverse energy mix.

“Polish wind will blow regardless of what happens in Iran or Moscow,” said Tusk. He also noted that, in the same coastal district where the offshore electricity comes onshore, Poland will soon build its first nuclear power plant as another key component of its energy strategy.

Popłynął pierwszy prąd z naszej morskiej farmy wiatrowej. Polska zwycięża! 🇵🇱 pic.twitter.com/I4b6672BN5

— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) July 10, 2026

Plans to build offshore wind farms and nuclear power plants were launched under Poland’s former Law and Justice (PiS) administration and have been continued by Tusk’s coalition government, which took power from PiS in December 2023.

Construction of Baltic Power began last year , and 54 turbines have already been installed. The project is a joint venture between Polish state energy giant Orlen – which has long been associated primarily with oil but has moved into greener forms of energy – and Canadian company Northland Power.

Baltic Power is scheduled to be completed by autumn this year, by which time 76 turbines will have been installed, with a total capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW). Over the coming years, five more wind farms are due to be established in the Polish Baltic, with a combined capacity of just over 6 GW.

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Other projects include another by Orlen, called Baltic East ; the Baltic 9 by PGE, another state energy firm; and a project developed by private Polish firm Polenergia and Norway’s Equinor.

In a major development last December, Poland’s Energy Regulatory Office (URE) concluded the country’s first-ever auction for offshore wind power, awarding contracts to three projects with a combined capacity of 3.4 gigawatts (GW).

The agreements provide for guaranteed prices for electricity produced from the wind farms for 25 years, with the state making up the costs if prices are lower but receiving excess revenues if they are higher.

Poland has also undertaken major investments in its power grid and other infrastructure to accommodate increased renewable sources , with much of the work funded by billions of euros from the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery funds.

Poland has successfully completed its first auction for offshore wind power.

It awarded contracts for three projects with a combined capacity of 3.4 GW, making it the largest such auction anywhere in Europe this year https://t.co/L3tYgbwS8D

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 19, 2025

The developments are part of a major shift by Poland, begun under PiS and continued by Tusk, to move away from coal, which still accounts for around half of power generation .

In 2023, PiS set out plans for Poland to generate around three quarters of its electricity from zero-emissions sources by 2040, with 51% coming from renewables and 23% from nuclear.

Under a national energy and climate plan approved by the current government last month, it plans by 2040 for Poland to generate 18-21% of power from offshore wind and 22-27% from onshore wind. A further 15-16% will come from nuclear, 14-18% from solar, 7-8% from gas and 0-5% from coal.

Speaking at today’s ceremony alongside Tusk, energy and climate minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska admitted that “offshore [wind] energy is more expensive than onshore wind or photovoltaic [solar] sources, but it competes well with gas and coal”.

Hennig-Kloska previously led efforts by the current government to expand onshore wind power, which had been largely blocked by the former PiS administration . However, a bill intended to loosen the rules for building onshore turbines was vetoed last year by PiS-aligned President Karol Nawrocki.

Poland's new president has used his veto for the first time, against a bill easing rules for building onshore wind turbines and freezing household electricity prices.

He criticised the government for combining the two issues in one piece of legislation https://t.co/1dCOUt7yQN

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 21, 2025

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Orlen (press materials)

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The Blood of Dawnwalker is taking remarkably big swings for developer Rebel Wolves' debut game. I played the upcoming RPG for four hours earlier this month , and came away fascinated by how physically it involves the player in its world. Time is an action point-style resource that keeps the game's world moving forward, while protagonist Coen's playstyle varies greatly as a vampire by night and human by day.

While its third-person action and open-world setting betray its developer's experience on RPG hits The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 , The Blood of Dawnwalker shows a clear drive to go deeper on role-playing elements. Catching up with game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, I suggest that a lot of the game's depth is typically reserved for isometric-style RPGs – think Baldur's Gate and Fallout, wherein rules and systems are used to reinforce their respective fantasies.

In another life, The Blood of Dawnwalker could have mirrored those examples even closer. "At the beginning of the game, we knew we wanted it to be third-person," shares Tomaszkiewicz, "[but] when we started thinking about combat, we thought maybe we would make it isometric."

"In the end, we thought that telling the story and being immersed with your characters is best when you see it all the time on screen," the director continues. "A big part of RPGs is itemization – changing your character, putting new clothes and weapons on, and so on. You want to see them on your character all the time, and in isometric games it works but the characters are smaller and the details are harder to see. We knew we had the technology and know-how to do really detailed characters, knew those materials would be really good, and decided to create a third-person [perspective] where you can change the distance from the character."

Fighting talk

(Image credit: Rebel Wolves) Starstruck

(Image credit: Bandai Namco) The Blood of Dawnwalker star was "slightly too excited" in his audition to veteran Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 devs: "I probably shouldn't have looked that up"

Rebel Wolves opted for real-time combat for the same immersive gains. "The goal we had was to not create combat where you see pretty stuff on the screen, like you're pressing a button and watching a movie. We wanted you to feel that you are in the center of combat, that you need to observe your opponent, and react, and learn to fight. I compare it to Guitar Hero, because there is a similar feeling that in the beginning – you cannot hit these buttons! – and after a week, you're doing it really fast [...] Here, you'll also have this learning curve."

I expected The Blood of Dawnwalker's combat to mirror The Witcher 3, which Tomaszkiewicz directed, but in play it's quicker and more dynamic. Your mouse or analog stick input determines the direction Coen's attack swings from – mixing it up makes enemies less likely to block your blows – and similarly, blocking or parrying a blow requires matching the direction it's aimed from.

How Coen fights depends on the time of day. When the sun is up, he's a fairly normal swordfighter, able to use combat techniques via an ability wheel – but not his vampiric powers. Those are limited to nocturnal use, letting Coen fight with his claws and other supernatural powers. A Dishonored-style blink allows you to reposition instantly and often, and while you can't heal by eating food in vampire form, you can snatch an enemy in combat to gain health with quick gulps of their blood.

(Image credit: Rebel Wolves) Playing Coen at the start of his journey means I don't have access to some of his more dramatic powers, but it already feels exceptional – comparable to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Dragon's Dogma 2, but easier to get to grips with. It's right on the sweet spot, involved enough for the sickos and straightforward enough for more casual fans – how did Rebel Wolves get there without over-cooking?

"Oh god, it was a lot of iteration," laughs Tomaszkiewicz. Combat started with a simpler concept and "quite easy" opponents, but it "started to get boring" over multiple playthroughs, leading to further additions. "From iteration to iteration we'd add something, change something, and in the end we are where we are now. There is no other way [to get it right] than iterating and playing all the time. If you're playing this game hundreds of times and still have fun when you fight, that was the goal – to create a combat system you can enjoy and you can repeat."

"The example I like to give here is Max Payne," he adds. "I replayed it five times, because I like the things I can do there, how it looks, and so on. I wanted to create it here, with similar feeling [and] different tools."

(Image credit: Rebel Wolves) Through the lens of combat, I get the impression that Rebel Wolves has spent the last four years untangling itself from the RPG genre's norms and expectations – instead following the fun and seeing where it leads. Its much-lauded time system is "like Persona," says Tomaszkiewicz, but argues The Blood of Dawnwalker's shifting day and night dynamic is unlike anything we've seen before. "There are no games we could have compared this to. We created two different loops, and [essentially] needed to create two games in one."

"You can play the same quest at day or night, and it's a little bit different," the director adds. " Different choices, different consequences – it's a lot."