Abstract
Sustainable development requires a holistic approach to natural resources and ecosystems to avoid their degradation. Cooling water—water used for cooling in industrial or manufacturing processes and then returned at elevated temperature to a local river or lake—is a common cause of thermal pollution. The purpose of the analysis was to assess how much cooling water is currently abstracted to generate electricity in Poland, what the dynamics of this abstraction in the last 20 years (2000−2019) were, and to what extent this abstraction affects the available freshwater resources in the country and in individual river basins. Moreover, the latest plans for the development of the electricity sector in Poland were analyzed to determine how the implementation of these plans may affect cooling water abstractions and the condition of Poland’s freshwater resources. Trend analysis was performed in order to assess the strength of linear trends in the studied time series. The results show that in Poland from 2000−2019, nearly 75% of water abstracted from surface resources was cooling water used to produce electricity. The dynamics of cooling water abstraction show a clear downward trend of 54.5 million m3 annually, despite a significant increase in electricity production. This decline is likely to continue over the next 20 years, with the major unknown being the planned introduction of nuclear power as an energy source.