Officials in Italy have said they are prepared to restart that country’s four remaining coal-fired power plants if supply issues for oil and natural gas persist due to the Iran war.
The comments from Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin earlier this month came just days after government officials in an energy bill said they would postpone a permanent shutdown of those coal-fired facilities until at least 2038, or 13 years beyond the original 2025 year-end deadline. Italy’s plan to end the use of coal by the end of last year was decreed in the country’s 2024 energy and climate plan.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government, which has pushed back against several European Union climate initiatives, has said Italy must consider industrial competitiveness and economic stability as part of its energy policies. The move to extend the operation of coal-fired power stations still needs final approval from lawmakers, though analysts expect it to move forward since it has widespread support from government ministers.
‘All Energy Sources … Must Be Used’
“All energy sources, at least in the immediate future, must be used to their fullest potential,” said Tommaso Foti, Italy’s minister for European Affairs and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The country’s co-ruling League party, which proposed the legislation to postpone coal plant closures, said it was “right and responsible” given the severity of the current energy crisis.
Italy joins Germany among European nations that are slowing or postponing plans to phase out coal. German Chancellor Friedrich Mer, speaking at a conference in late March, said his country—which plans to fully phase out coal and lignite-fired generation by 2038, with some areas looking at a full closure by 2030—needs more gas-fired power generation.
“We must now move quickly to build gas-fired power stations … we may even have to keep existing coal-fired power stations connected to the grid for longer, should the energy crisis continue, and a shortage actually arise,” said Mer.
Germany and the European Commission in January announced an agreement in principle to allow state support for new gas-fired power plants that can later be converted to run on hydrogen. The deal calls for the first units due to come online by 2031.
It was two years ago over Easter weekend when Germany closed seven coal-fired units, taking more than 3 GW of generation capacity offline. The country at the end of last year, despite calls for more gas-fired generation, cut in half the capacity of new natural gas-fired power plants it has said it would consider by 2032, after earlier pushing for at least 20 GW of new generation from gas over the next few years. Germany closed all of its remaining nuclear power plants in 2023.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
