Growing awareness of limits set by exhaustibility of natural resources has led to a conclusion that only through their valuation in monetary terms one may assess a comprehensive economic impact of their use. Thus mineral resources have been included from the beginning to almost all studies regarding natural resources assessments. The first result, widely recognized by international community, of researches came in the 1993 – edition of the “Handbook of National Accounting: Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting”. One of the key outcomes of these works was a conclusion that measuring value of mineral resources for mineral raw materials production, alongside with physical flows of these materials, environment related transactions and measuring impact of the economy on the environment, should make basic pillars of this newly designed system, later named as the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA). As implementation of SEEA is still in a primary stage, many methodological issues remain unsolved. This article attempts to enumerate achievements made so far and indicate issues in need for further development. Taking into account the importance of mineral resources for further economic development of Poland authors indicate a necessity to develop and implement methodologies for monetary assessment of resources/reserves available, extracted and depleted in order to form a methodological base for a meaningful policy of sustainable growth. The special challenge results from monetary assessment of explored but yet undeveloped mineral deposits.

The paper presented intends to fill up a gap in surveying the Hotelling Rule by taking a company based, microeconomic approach based on analyses of annual reports. Using selected data three fundamental hyphothesis are tested: 1) growth rate of margins (“net margins” including a capital charge) per unit realized by mining companies must exceed a rate equal to their cost of capital, 2) output shall follow deviations from the Hotelling growth line, 3) margins shall follow a path set by individually defined expected rate of return. The analysis was based on 5 leading gold producers, responsible for ca 15–20% of global primary production, all of them public and listed on a stock exchange for the entire period of 2004–2019/2020. As margin shall grow at a rate compensating individual risk of a company in consideration, they shall not be homogenous. At 1st step industry WACC was adopted to calculate a normalized capital charge. The calculations revealed no support for Hotelling Rule. There is no evidence that over a period of above 15 years margins follow any path determined by a growing expotential function, following a compound rate. Subsequently it was checked whether output volume is corrected due to development of actual versus expected (resulting from the Hotelling Rule) margin values. Selected companies were near indifferent to this parameter while taking decisions in area of volumes supplied. Neither there is no evidence of relation between changes in output and margins. Finally, it was checked whether differences between expected and actual margins’ growth paths could be described by a linear function, resulting from consequent adoption of a risk rate component. Here neither any evidence was found. In conclusion no support for the Hotelling rule was identified.

This paper presents a comprehensive economic comparison between renewable and fossil-fuel-based heating systems for a newly constructed residential building in Kraków, Poland, over the period 2022–2030. The analysis introduces the concept of Corrected Final Energy Consumption (CFEC) as a harmonized measure for comparing various energy sources and applies the Present Value of Total Lifecycle Cost (PVTLC) as an appropriate financial metric for non-commercial residential investments. Four heating options were examined: district heating system (DHS), gas boiler, air-to-water heat pump, and heat pump combined with photovoltaic (PV) panels. Based on real tariffs and standardized data from the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), the DHS option demonstrated the lowest lifecycle cost, while the air-to-water heat pump—despite environmental advantages—proved the most expensive without substantial subsidies. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the strong influence of investment subsidies and fuel price fluctuations on the competitiveness of alternative systems. The findings highlight the methodological shortcomings of conventional annual-cost approaches and propose PVTLC as a more reliable decision-making tool for residential energy planning. The study also discusses regulatory, climatic, and behavioral factors affecting investment outcomes and emphasizes the need to integrate financial, environmental, and social criteria when evaluating household-level energy solutions.

W artykule przedstawiono ewolucję przepisów, które odgrywały ważną rolę w egzekwowaniu obowiązku likwidacji kopalń. Szczególną uwagę zwrócono na zapewnienie środków finansowych na ten cel. Wszelkie regulacje prawne, aby były skuteczne, muszą przewidywać mechanizm zgromadzenia tych środków przed rozpoczęciem procesu likwidacji. Trudność dotyczy możliwości określenia jego dokładnych ram czasowych i finansowych, co sprawia, że zadanie to jest niezwykle trudne. Istnieje bowiem konieczność dopasowania niepewnych, odległych wydatków do precyzji wymaganej od przepisów prawa. Na przykładzie polskiego górnictwa węgla brunatnego przedstawiono efektywność omawianych regulacji. Nie tylko nasze, ale i kolejne pokolenie zmierzy się ze skutkami jego zamknięcia. Niestety, dopiero w 2001 roku wprowadzono szereg przepisów mających na celu zabezpieczenie finansowe likwidacji kopalń. Zasadniczą ich wadą jest to, że obowiązek szczegółowego planowania procesu likwidacji kopalni przypada dopiero na końcowy etap wydobycia, a nie dużo wcześniej. Dlatego środki zgromadzone w Funduszu Likwidacji Zakładu Górniczego (FLZG), zwykle gromadzone w wysokości 10% opłaty eksploatacyjnej, są niewystarczające. W przypadku polskich kopalń wpłaty do FLZG pokrywają tylko część kosztów prac likwidacyjnych. Te negatywne skutki przedstawionych powyżej luk prawnych są niwelowane przez działania administracyjne. Polski rząd zabezpieczył finansowanie procesu likwidacji kopalń poprzez ich konsolidację z elektrowniami opalanymi węglem brunatnym. Obecnie planowana jest w Polsce budowa 6 elektrowni jądrowych, w których przypadku takie postępowanie będzie niemożliwe. Dlatego już teraz, uwzględniając doświadczenie z górnictwa węgla brunatnego, należy stworzyć mechanizm finansowego zabezpieczenie ich likwidacji.

This article presents the evolution of financial reporting regulations and practices regarding decommissioning liabilities with a focus on the managerial approach to value creation processes in mining companies. Firstly, the author demonstrates the importance of provisions for the above-mentioned obligations for their overall financial standings. Than an analyses of the US and European financial reporting regulations from 1999 up to recent developments is provided to identify two fundamental challenges, related to: (a) a discount rate that should be applied to actualize cash flows needed to settle decommissioning liabilities, or broader, to proper inclusion of the risk factor into computations, (b) value recognition of post-retirement assets or broader, efficient management of these assets to maximize a mining project and company value. It has been proved that discounting is not a proper technique to deal with uncertainty of cash flows needed to settle decommissioning obligations, as mirroring a recognized practice applied for investment projects leads to results which are not only counterintuitive but significantly underestimate their current values. Therefore, a risk-free rate should be applied, and other methods must be developed to include uncertainty factors into computations. With respect to post-closure asset management, consequences of accounting treatment of gains from asset disposal have been analyzed. A need for adopting a broader perspective encompassing non-mining-related use of such assets in the ESG context was indicated. The article also demonstrates the value of mining industry experience for other industries facing similar problems, like renewable energy.