Rome (AFP) – Italy’s parliament voted Tuesday to delay the closure of the country’s coal-fired power stations by over a decade, a move experts slammed as “worrying” political propaganda. In a fresh challenge to the EU’s green transition, Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right coalition government pushed the shutdown back from 2026 to 2038 on “energy security” grounds. Italy is heavily reliant on imported gas and Rome is under pressure from industry and consumers over the rise in already sky-high energy costs due to the Middle East war.
While Brussels insists that phasing out coal is key to achieving the EU’s climate goals, Rome says it may be forced to use its coal-fired power stations if gas prices continue upwards. But experts who spoke to AFP said that reactivating the plants would not lower electricity prices. Italy’s move comes as others, including Germany, South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan, have similarly signalled that coal-fired plants could ease energy woes caused by the war.
The Italian government’s bill extending the phase-out was approved by the lower house of parliament Tuesday, and now goes to the Senate, where the ruling coalition has a majority. The delay is “a worryingly backward-looking political signal”, while “any security gain is far from guaranteed,” Beatrice Petrovich, senior energy analyst at energy think tank Ember, told AFP. Only Germany, Poland, and Bulgaria share a coal phase-out date as unambitious as Italy’s new one, she said.
The EU’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, who was in Rome Tuesday for a hearing with senators on Italy’s energy mix, declined to comment on Rome’s decision.
Climate think tank ECCO said Rome’s postponement was “symbolically damaging, but low-impact in practice — at least for now.” “The government is deliberately maintaining ambiguity between ‘not dismantling’ and ‘actually using’ coal plants for political gains,” it said. Italy currently has four coal-fired power stations. Two of them are on the mainland, are dormant, and lost their authorisation to burn coal in January, ECCO said. Restarting them would mean applying for new permits, a process that takes years and would be subject to significant legal and community opposition, it said.
The other two are in Sardinia, and are earmarked for closure in 2028-2029, once the island is electrically linked to the mainland via a new submarine cable. ECCO’s Executive Director Luca Bergamaschi told AFP Italy’s “old and largely non-operational coal fleet would be very expensive to restart.” Petrovich agreed that “coal plays a minor role in Italy’s power mix and this won’t change going forward.” Italy’s total coal generation in 2025 was approximately 2,975 GWh, accounting for less than 1 percent of national electricity output, according to state-controlled power grid operator Terna.
There is no financial incentive for operators to return to coal, and the price of coal imported to Europe has recently surged, the experts said. Coal is also uncompetitive against gas under the EU’s carbon tax scheme. Including it in the energy security toolkit “risks being an additional burden on Italy’s electricity consumers, who already pay some of the highest electricity prices in the EU,” Petrovich said.
© 2024 AFP
