The mining database has undergone its second update this year, with the scope limited to two datasets and several spreadsheet corrections. In addition, we enriched the set of visualizations with two new ones. The current version is 5.5, while version 6.0 should not be expected before the middle of next year.
- The first “update” is, paradoxically, less data. We had to discontinue updates to employment figures for individual mines because most companies stopped publishing them. We note this setback in transparency with regret and surprise. Access to this information is more important than ever, given ongoing discussions about adjusting the support instruments in the act regulating the functioning of mining and the growing number of employees expressing willingness to leave in recent company surveys.
- As a partial remedy to the above, the new chart on the database website now shows employment figures for entire companies, as well as the change between 2023 and 2024.
- The second new chart presents lignite production, not only for the years available in the database, but all the way back to 1989.
- We supplemented data on coal extraction in 2024 by type (31+32, 33, etc.) using the MIDAS database of the Polish Geological Institute (PIG).
- We added data from deposit cards in the MIDAS PIG database: industrial reserves for 2024, and verified and updated other fields where necessary, such as start and end of exploitation, concession data, mining area, county, municipality, deposit area, and coal types within each deposit.
- In the “End of exploitation” column (formerly “Decommissioning date”) in the 2_ZLOZA_DEPOSITS sheet, we updated certain SRK mine dates to those available in PIG data: the previous values reflected the end of liquidation activities, whereas the new ones refer to the end of actual resource extraction.
- In the META sheet, we added information about partners supporting our work on the database, along with their logos.
