Access to energy, including electricity, determines countries’ socio-economic development. The growing demand for electricity translates into environmental problems. Energy is therefore a crucial element of the European Union’s sustainable development strategy. This article aims to present the changes taking place in the electricity market in Poland considering the goals of the energy policy until 2040. This is the basis for the determination of the scale of processes taking place in the Polish energy sector from two perspectives, i.e., the production of electricity considering its level and energy carriers used, and the consumption of electricity in households depending on their location (rural vs. urban areas). The research was conducted at the regional level (NUTS 2 until 2017) in Poland. Secondary data from the Central Statistical Office (GUS) contained in the Local Data Bank were used, along with information from the European Commission and Eurostat websites. Results of the study made it possible to identify areas in which a greater environmental load is observed due to increasing electricity consumption. The coefficient of localization and concentration (by Florence) and the rate of change were applied. These results indicate that, in Poland, it is now the rural areas that have a greater negative environmental impact than urban areas, resulting from differences in unit energy consumption. Compared to the other provinces, rural areas of Podlaskie province had the highest rate of growth in energy consumption in the years 2004–2019, with an annual average of almost 20%.

The study investigated the organisational resilience (OR) levels of rural non-profit organisations (RNPOs) in the areas of activity or non-activity to adapt under the global uncertainty conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, in April/May 2020, the managers of 35 RNPOs located in Poland were queried. The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (${\rho }_S$), the coefficient of determination ($R^2)$ and a transformation coefficient (d) were primarily used to verify the hypotheses and interpret the relationships studied. The study revealed four OR descriptive levels—progressive (PR), sustainable (SR), regressive (RR), and downward (DR). The findings also show that the undertaken activities are related to the OR descriptive levels. RNPOs realised one of two adaptations: passive adaptation aimed at returning to the pre-pandemic original state with no changes may lead to a bounce backwards and an uncertain survival, whilst active adaptation leads to a transformation process between OR levels to move forward and thrive in adapting to post-pandemic changes. This study confirmed that building OR requires understanding the ways of transformations among OR levels to undertake activities in strategic areas, i.e., activity scope (AS), cooperation (CO), and finance (FI), to adapt and transform RNPOs’ in an environment of post-pandemic uncertainty.

As part of the development of sustainable forest management, it is important to identify the risk of reduced availability of commercial forests, assess the adaptation of companies to new conditions, and analyze measures that allow them to adapt to the changing market situation. The aim of this research was to confirm or refute the hypothesis that forest service plants in Poland are at an increased risk of operating under the planned exclusion of 20% of State Forests’ area from commercial use. A direct survey method was used for the study. The results of the study indicated that most companies (65%) plan to reduce employment due to restrictions on forest area, which is a result of difficulties in the labor market in the forestry sector. A significant proportion of respondents (82%) perceive the exclusion of part of the forests from commercial use as a threat to their business, with as many as 41% assessing this threat as very high. A total of 31% of companies assess their ability to adapt to change as poor or very poor, which raises concerns about the future of their business. A significant proportion of respondents (77%) indicated that the uncertainty surrounding the rules for excluding forest land could negatively affect their investment decisions. The study results showed that changes in business risk, responsiveness to change, and adaptability associated with the planned forest exclusion policy were independent of company size, the form of inter-company cooperation, or employment levels. A wide range of issues that must be addressed to maintain sustainable forest management were identified, including concerns related to the perceived or anticipated reduction in employment under a planned exclusion scenario.