A Perspective on the World of Electric Vehicles from the World of Energy – 05 The End of Coal-Fired Power Plants - Europe

?????????????? After discussing the situation of coal power plants in Europe, it is now time to check the plans to close these plants. When it comes to closure plans, decisions taken on a country-by-country basis become important. Some countries in Europe have to move faster, while others have to move slower. In this article, we will discuss the situation in Europe on a country-by-country basis. Source of the information we will use is public information that can be accessed at https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/? .?

?????????????? First of all, it would be appropriate to examine our map in Figure 1 and look at how the differences on the basis of countries give results on the map of Europe. In this map, the dates of the abandonment of electrical energy obtained from fossil fuels on a country basis are colored.? Countries in dark green have already completely removed fossil fuel plants from electricity generation. The countries shown in light green are those that have planned to phase out fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2030. Countries in purple have planned to end the use of fossil fuels, but they have targeted after 2030 in their plans. Countries in red have not officially shared any goals related to phasing out fossil fuels. On the map, Western, Northern and Central Europe shows that a significant part of the country has either achieved its zero fossil fuel target or

We see that they aim to give up these fuels by 2030.

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Figure 2 gives us information on a calendar which countries will completely shut down coal power plants in which year. As can be seen on the calendar, most European countries plan to close their coal power plants before 2030. When we look at the post-2030 period, we first see Romania in 2032. The Romanian government has decided to close its last coal power plant in 2032, the last time it took it in 2022. At the same time, they decided to increase the country's solar capacity from 5 gigawatts to 8.5 gigawatts by 2030.

By 2035, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia will close their coal power plants. Although the Czech Republic decided in 2019 to close all coal power plants in 2038, the new government in 2022 pushed this date back to 2033. The calendar then continues with Montenegro in 2035, Germany in 2038, and Hungary in 2040. We will not consider all countries here, but in the table below you can find information on which date each European country will close its coal power plants.

There will be a few points to draw attention to here. The first of these is the fact that 13 countries in Europe still do not use coal in electricity generation. In order to show other countries how it can be done, the abandonment of coal by 13 countries is an important example. When we look at these 13 countries, we see that half of them are small countries that we can think of as relatively easy to implement. The Baltic states, Luxembourg or Albania may be included in this category. However, we also note that relatively large and important countries such as Portugal, Austria or Sweden do not need coal power plants.

The second important issue is that a significant part of the countries in Europe have included in their plans to close their coal power plants by 2030. In this group, we can see important countries of Europe such as England, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary. Fewer countries have planned to phase out their coal power plants between 2030 and 2040. Here we find Germany, the most important user of coal power plants in Europe.

The countries in the last group in the fourth place are the countries that have not had any publicly announced plans in this area so far. Countries in Europe that have not yet planned to close their coal power plants are: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Poland, Serbia and Türkiye. Poland and Türkiye, which are among these countries, are two of the countries with significant coal power plant stocks in Europe. Poland is already making plans to open new coal, power plants and lignite mines. However, the Polish government is making plans to restructure the energy sector away from coal investments. The Polish government also envisages keeping the state-owned mining company PGG alive with state aid until 2049. Although Poland is the world's 23rd largest economy and has signed the COP26 global coal-to-clean energy agreement, it claims developing country status. Currently, Poland's plans are not in line with the Paris Agreement, which requires all European countries to completely shut down their coal power plants by 2030.

Türkiye is the fifth most important country in the world in terms of planning new coal power plants. Not only through new power plants, but also through the renovation of aging power plants, Türkiye 's coal-fired electricity generation capacity remains at a high level. Although the Turkish government took an important step in this direction by signing the United Nations' Paris climate agreement in October 2021, it has still not announced a coal phase-out plan. The commitment to a net zero carbon plan by 2053 is seen as an important step for Türkiye in this sense.

As can be seen, the work to prepare the ground for the widespread use of electric vehicles in Europe is also progressing in this area through the closure of coal power plants. Since the carbon dioxide emissions produced by the electricity obtained by the closure of coal power plants will decrease, the amount of carbon emissions of the electricity consumed by electric vehicles during their lifetime will also remain low. Therefore, it is aimed to permanently reduce carbon emissions in Europe, which has switched to electric vehicles.