Italy to Keep Coal Power Stations Open for Another Decade
Italy has delayed its plan to close its coal-fired power stations by more than a decade as the Iran war drives up oil and gas prices and countries around the world turn back to coal. The Telegraph has the story.
In a significant reversal, the country will now continue to burn coal in at least one, and possibly up to three, power generation plants until 2038.
Italy’s move comes as countries around the world, including Japan, South Korea and Germany, are turning back to coal to alleviate the spiralling energy crisis.
Italy had planned to be one of the first countries in mainland Europe to phase out coal, with a deadline of 2025 to shutter all its coal-fired power plants and replace them with gas.
Successive Italian governments have retired 5,810 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired capacity since the turn of the century.
With just three plants still operating last year, coal was responsible for less than 2% of the country’s energy mix, according to the International Energy Agency. The vast majority of electricity came from oil and gas.
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, watered down the coal phase-out two years ago, saying technical problems meant the Sulcis coal-fired plant, on the island of Sardinia, would have to remain open until 2028.
The Government then decided to mothball Italy’s last remaining mainland plants, which have a combined capacity of 3,960MW, rather than close them altogether.
To switch them back on, however, the Government would need to request new EU permits to burn coal. It will also need to decide whether to use the two plants as ‘cold reserves’, which are turned on only when needed, or whether to go for a full restart.
Italy’s move means that nine of the 30 European countries that use or have used coal power now have a phase-out deadline beyond 2030, according to the website Beyond Fossil Fuels.
Another nine still have a pre-2030 deadline, as Italy used to, while six have not set any target.
Britain is among the half-dozen countries that have already closed all their coal-fired power plants, shuttering the last ones in 2024.
The German Government, which has a 2038 target, has prepared a law that could bring 6.5 gigawatts of reserve coal capacity back into service if the crisis drags on.
“We may need to keep our coal plants online for longer,” Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, said last week. “I am not ready to gamble with the core of our energy supply just because we agreed on some deadlines years ago.”
Worth reading in full.
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Not strictly true that all the UK coal fired plant has been closed. What has actually happened is that they changed the source of fuel from coal to wood at a couple of sites – Drax, and Lynmouth at least.
Any idea of what type of coal is in use in Italy? Probably well known that traditionally many stations in East Germany used lignite; not nice, but locally available.
I’ve just looked a couple of things up:
Lignite gives 10-20 MJ / kg (2.8 – 5.5 kWh / kg)
Wood chip gives 18-21 MJ / kg (5 – 5.8 kWh / kg)
By contrast anthracite gives 33 MJ / kg (9.2 kWh / kg)
It would appear that wood-burning stations could probably be easily converted back to coal burning. Easy from an engineering perspective but would need political clout.
I had not heard about Lynemouth as most of the publicity is about Drax consuming US and Canadian forests. It used to belong to Alcan and supplied their aluminium smelting plant but since it became too expensive to smelt in the UK to plant closed and Alcan sold the power stations to RWE. It was converted to wood chip – possibly with taxpayer money. Drax has converted half of its furnaces to wood chip because taxpayers paid for it. they applied for taxpayers to fund the other half but possibly due to the bad press about the wood chip sources, the government refused. Because Drax is signed up to the World Empire of Fascism based in Davos, they refused to offer the coal plant to National Grid as a generating source if required. What has been converted to wood chip can be converted back to coal. Italy – and other countries – were sensible in moth-balling plants while in the UK retarded politicians whacked off over pushing the button to blow the plants up while they were almost still warm. I am not sure what the status of the recently cloes Ratcliffe on Soar plant is that was owned by… Read more »
“We would have LOVED to save the planet but, well, Trump, you see, Trump!”
A politically convenient excuse to backtrack on the loony Net Zero.
Whatever works, I guess…
Interesting that they mothballed some power plants. In this country they were deliberately destroyed by the fake Conservatives. I remember Alok Sharma boasting about how he had just blown up Ferrybridge power station.
Strangely the same fake Conservatives are now very keen to increase output from the North Sea. Are they serious this time? Or just lying as so often before?
Last sentence: thine own lips hath said it.
Fortunately plucky Britain is continuing down the Net Zero death spiral and alone will save the Planet.
Hurrah! for us.
How many times do you peasants have to be told. It’s nothing to do with saving the planet (any more), it’s about energy security!! And WE will only achieve that when YOU are all in total darkness
The UK will cling to the NET ZERO lifeboat till blackouts and rationing become an every day occurrence. They would rather steal even more money from middle class bill payers and hand it to the poorest people to alleviate their energy poverty than admit that their eco socialist pretend to save the planet CO2 obsession is a complete farce that has us with the highest electricity prices in the whole world and at the whim of the wind.
Why does it always have to be the UK that has to pretend to save the planet harder and faster than every other country? We are governed now by United Nations Parasites that put reducing CO2 above every other consideration and it is DESTROYING US.