Sołowow Pushes Private SMR Fleet as Poland's Answer to Looming Power Gap

What Sołowow Is Asking Poland to Approve

Michał Sołowow, one of Poland's best-known entrepreneurs, used an interview with Forbes Poland to make an unusually direct appeal: let private investors start building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) immediately, or the country will enter the 2030s with a widening power deficit. He put the gap at roughly 5 GW by 2032 and about 20 GW by 2040, and said the technology — GE Vernova's SMR design — is ready now, with Orlen as the Polish partner.

Sołowow's central argument is that the SMR approach breaks with the economics of large nuclear plants, which he likens to made-to-measure suits: no one knows the final cost or completion date. His project, he says, is the first in the world built around private investors earning returns on nuclear generation, using a standardised fleet model. The reactor itself, he stressed, is not revolutionary; the business model is.

The interview also attacked Poland's renewables push. Sołowow claimed Polish companies pay some of the highest electricity prices in the world, that wind and solar need expensive gas backup, and that renewable-heavy systems force grid overloads and dependence on imported gas. He endorsed consumer and small-scale renewables at a 10–20% share of the mix, while insisting that data centres and artificial intelligence — which he called Poland's most important future investments — require off-grid, 24/7 power that SMRs can provide.

Politically, he described a stalemate: the government expresses understanding, but decisions do not follow. He challenged ministers to "sign the documents and I will start tomorrow," and called on Warsaw to remove the project from the election-cycle agenda.

The Pitfalls and Incentives Behind the SMR Push

Sołowow's private-nuclear bet

The claim to be pioneering commercial nuclear ownership needs to be read in context. Sołowow is promoting a project he controls, and the interview is as much a pitch to ministers and investors as it is an analysis. Still, the underlying point is relevant: previous nuclear programmes in Poland were state-financed, so a privately funded fleet would depend on regulatory predictability — permits, grid connections and long-term revenue certainty — rather than on a state budget line. That shifts risk from the taxpayer to private balance sheets.

The renewables arithmetic and what it omits

Sołowow's capacity-factor numbers — 36–42% for offshore wind, 32–35% for onshore wind, 10.5–13% for photovoltaics — are broadly in line with real-world performance and support his basic point: intermittent sources must be backed by dispatchable capacity. But his conclusion that an OZE-plus-gas mix is worse than gas alone is a policy judgment, not a fact. The interview does not weigh storage cost trajectories, interconnectors or demand-response tools. What it does expose is a genuine planning problem: if Poland does not choose a stable baseload technology, it must overbuild something.

Why Orlen and the government are moving slowly

Sołowow attributes the delay to what he calls Orlen's weak mandate and to a political system in which inaction is safer than a risky decision. That is a plausible reading of a state-controlled company facing a changeable political environment. The 2032 and 2040 gap forecasts give the argument urgency, but they are his projections; the official grid operator's plans will be the test. He also invoked a US ambassador's warning that the SMR issue is one of public security, tying the project to Poland's role on NATO's eastern flank.

The data-centre hook

Sołowow's strongest near-term argument may be the one aimed at data-centre investors. Large AI facilities need reliable power and often off-grid supply, which makes co-locating with nuclear units attractive. If Poland can offer SMR-backed, low-carbon power with grid backup, it has a chance to compete for the data-centre investment that Sołowow ties to future prosperity. That linkage is plausible, but it depends on speed: competing markets are also courting the same investors.

What Polish Decision-Makers and Energy Buyers Should Watch

• For Warsaw: the test of the finance minister's pledge to cut energy prices this decade will be concrete permitting decisions on SMR sites. Sołowow says the project can start on signature; investors will read any further delay as a signal.
• For Orlen's board: as the state-controlled partner, it carries the political exposure of saying yes or no. Delaying past the point where the 2032 supply gap becomes visible would shift the cost of inaction onto electricity buyers and the grid.
• For energy-intensive and data-centre investors: track whether Polish SMR developers secure off-grid power agreements plus grid backup — the condition Sołowow says customers require — and compare that offer with other European markets.
• For industry analysts: validate the 5 GW (2032) and 20 GW (2040) gap forecasts against Poland's transmission system operator before basing investment decisions on them.