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https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countri

https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countries still use coal generators, and 6 have not even planned to phase them out (Serbia, Moldova, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Bosnia). Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway Phased out: 2016: Belgium 2020: Sweden, Austria 2021: Portugal 2024: United Kingdom 2025: Ireland Phase-out planned: 2026: Slovakia, Greece 2027: France 2028: Italy, Denmark 2029: The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland 2030: Spain, North Macedonia 2032: Romania 2033: Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia 2035: Ukraine 2038: Germany 2040: Bulgaria 2041: Montenegro

brazzy 7mo ago
> Never used coal power: > Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway I very much doubt this is true for any of those countries. In fact, I know it is untrue for Switzerland, although they did stop using it long ago (mid 20th century). Edit: Norway actually ran a coal power plant until 2023, on Spitsbergen
- bramhaag 7mo ago
  I agree that the wording is a little misleading. "No coal ever in the electricity mix" is what's stated on the site. It seems they consider only coal use in the 21st century in mainland Europe + UK (i.e. not Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, etc.).
sampo 7mo ago
Estonia has lots of oil shale (not same thing as shale oil). They never needed to import coal, because they have their own fossil fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Estonia#Oil-shale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Estonia#Oil-shale
- jnsaff2 7mo ago
  This is true. A nuance often missed. Different rock (that is considerably worse in several ways, needs heavy fuel oil to be added to actually burn and has I think even higher co2 output per unit of energy) but kinda the same.
NicuCalcea 7mo ago
Moldova's coal plant is in Transnistria, a territory occupied by Russia. There are no phasing out plans because we have no control over it.
- mmooss 7mo ago
  You could disconnect from it. That's much easier said than done and probably very complicated by the occupation, but I would guess that disconnecting would reduce coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions proportionally to power usage.
  - Zhenya 7mo ago
    Moldavians have bigger problems that greenhouse emissions.
    - mmooss 7mo ago
      Everyone claims to have bigger problems, but greenhouse gas emissions are the biggest problem. Arguably, they are a particularly big problem to Moldovans because Russia's military is funded by greenhouse gas emissions.
    - estimator7292 7mo ago
      Greenhouse gas emissions are a larger existential threat than global war. A global nuclear war might be more catastrophic than unchecked climate change, but probably not by much.
  - bloak 7mo ago
    Disconnect from it? If it's connected to some kind of grid then you'd have to disconnect from the whole grid, surely? And if being connected to a grid that contains a coal-fired power station counts as using coal then how many countries are really coal-free?
  - NicuCalcea 7mo ago
    Moldova has not purchased any energy from it since 2024. I should also note it is primarily a gas plant, fuelled by extremely cheap (nearly free) gas subsidised by Russia. It only falls back to coal when supply is disrupted, which happened when Ukraine stopped transiting Russian gas on its territory.
deanc 7mo ago
This is now how we should be looking at the problem. It doesn't matter if you burn coal yourself or not. What matters is the source of your energy. Every single one of those countries imports energy from other markets which consume fossil fuels for production.
- cjblomqvist 7mo ago
  I know at least Sweden has been a net exporter for a long time. It's a little bit complicated (that's what happens in a market economy). Anyhow, we/EU should continue to strive to end coal as an energy source for all countries, be since we can do much better.
  - simonask 7mo ago
    The unique geography of the Scandinavian peninsula combined with very low population density makes Sweden a bit less interesting in terms of achieving zero emissions in other geographies, and I doubt Swedes would be cool with expanding hydro and nuclear to the scale required by Germany. But yeah, I mean, good job and all. The answer for the rest of the continent is going to be wind and solar in the medium term, and probably more nuclear in the long term.
    - cjblomqvist 7mo ago
      Totally. Tech neutral state incentives is the way to go for sure, everybody has different environment and context to consider (same within Sweden). Southern Europe has very different opportunities (much better situation for solar for example). Anyway, my comment was in response to the extreme comment (parent) about how all rich countries became rich using fossil fuels - implying that that's the more or less only way to transition from poor to rich. I think it's important to note that that's not necessarily the case. You don't need to destroy the environment to go from poor to rich, even though a lot of countries historically have done it that way (also noteworthy that they did it without knowing about the consequences for the environment).
renhanxue 7mo ago
For Sweden, the coal plants were exclusively for cogeneration (district heating with electricity as a byproduct) and only used as peaker plants in winter. Some of them still exist but have been converted to burn biofuels instead, mostly woodchips and other byproducts from the forestry industry. For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's.
- ggm 7mo ago
  I may be wrong, but I believe the british experience with biofuels is that although you want to believe its surplus byproduct, the cheapest source is often grown to be fuel for a biofuel generator. It's like soy/corn for ethanol, it isn't sufficiently profitable to do this solely with waste product, you get better margins growing to fulfill the contract.
  - endominus 7mo ago
    Even if that were the case, wouldn't it still be an essentially net-zero pollution system (disregarding small contributions from transport etc.)?
    - tpm 7mo ago
      Depends on the input into growing the biomass. If you are using industrial fertilizers, it's very far from net-zero. Besides that, from my memory there are studies analyzing this and I think they found it's never net-zero.
    - youngtaff 7mo ago
      In the British case… it’s being chipped and shipped from Canada and there’s doubts it’s waste wood It makes more sense to leave trees in the ground than burning them to generate energy
  - renhanxue 7mo ago
    That may be true in many places, but the Swedish forestry industry is very big, and the district heating plants really do burn mostly forestry byproducts. Of all the biofuel used in Sweden (not just for energy generation), 75% comes from forestry products, and the vast majority of it is either unrefined wood products or byproducts from Kraft process paper manufacturing (like tall oil and turpentine etc). Specifically in district heating, 87% of the forestry-sourced fuel is unrefined wood products. Almost half of it is just bark, branches and treetops. Of all the biomass in an average mature tree logged in Sweden, 43% ends up as pulpwood, 43% as saw timber, 8% gets burned for fuel and the remaining 6% is treetops and branches which also tend to end up burned for fuel. There is definitely a lot of debate in Sweden about sustainable forestry practices, though. The industry really wants to clearcut everything for convenience, but it's really bad for biodiversity and the general public hates it. Source: the report Hållbarare biobränsle i fjärrvärmesektorn, Energiforsk 2023; specifically the charts on pages 14 and 15. Link: https://energiforsk.se/media/33316/2023-979-ha-llbarare-biobra-nslen-fo-r-fja-rrva-rmesektorn.pdf https://energiforsk.se/media/33316/2023-979-ha-llbarare-biob... Addendum: I believe there's also been some studies and experiments involving importing olive pits from the Mediterranean olive oil industry for burning in district heating plants, but I don't think it's been done at scale.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
runarberg 7mo ago
Iceland (never used coal to my knowledge) is missing from the list.
- bell-cot 7mo ago
  Iceland's situation - tiny population, geothermal paradise - may be difficult for 99% of the world's countries to replicate.
  - munk-a 7mo ago
    The US is in an excellent position to massively harness wind and solar and yet right now it's dialing up the coal usage. I am comfortable celebrating Iceland's decision to not be maliciously dependent on fossil fuels.
    - nomel 7mo ago
      > yet right now it's dialing up the coal usage Reference? This seems to be false. Coal is still on decline, while solar is what's ramping up [1][2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67005 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67005 [2] https://ieefa.org/resources/energy-information-administration-us-energy-transition-speed-forward-through-2025 https://ieefa.org/resources/energy-information-administratio...
      - munk-a 7mo ago
        Trump had a few executive orders that derailed phase out plans and the DoE released a coal plant refurbishing subsidy[1]. 1. https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-100-million-restore-americas-coal-plants https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-...
        nomel 7mo ago
        So, in both cases it's helping sustain. "Ramping up" means increasing. Is there something I'm missing here?
arbuge 7mo ago
> Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway Definitely wrong - Malta has used coal power for example. See for example: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/power-and-energy/maltas-energy-system https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/power-and-energy/mal... "In 1979, a second oil crisis, this time due to the Iranian Revolution, again brought into question Malta’s energy policy and made the government seek alternatives. Between 1982 and 1987, four stream turbines were installed at the Marsa Power Station. This strategy could have worked if the environmental and human health impacts of the coal used at the power station had not caused the local population to protest. In 1987, construction of a new power plant, at Delimara, started; the plant was commissioned in 1994. In the meantime, the Marsa Power Station continued to be improved, with new turbines added to eliminate the use of coal. On January 12, 1995, Malta became independent of coal but consequently became fully dependent on oil."
realaaa 7mo ago
like - never ever used coal power?? very hard to believe this... > Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway
- jesterson 7mo ago
  It's not true of course. Correct would be to say it perhaps never produced power by coal. But It bought a lot and most of it had come from coal generation.
huhkerrf 7mo ago
> 2038: Germany Well, sure is good the environmentalists shut down the German nuclear plants!
- iknowstuff 7mo ago
  Was it the environmentalists or the corrupt German government wanting to send more money to Russia for their natural gas via nordstream2
  - p_l 7mo ago
    The anti-nuclear position in Germany is very old, and core to the existence of Greenpeace and green parties on DACH region (down to firing RPGs at reactors). Does Russia benefit and probably fund it? Sure. But DACH environmentalism grew from antinuclear protests, not the other way around, and thus will boycott nuclear even when it goes against their modern stated goals.
  - kharak 7mo ago
    Sometimes interests intersect.
- SvenL 7mo ago
  Yes it’s good, but it’s bad that conservative parties still blocking modernization of the power grid/renewables. It would be good if we could modernize our grid to support easier exchange of power from north to south and vise versa.
- nixass 7mo ago
  > Well, sure is good the environmentalists shut down the German nuclear plants! Shutting down the nukes is inversely proportional to homeopathy popularity in Germany. That says it all
  - jwe 7mo ago
    That sounds like a neat statistic. Do you have a source containing the data or better yet a rendered map showing this?

brazzy 7mo ago

> Never used coal power: > Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway I very much doubt this is true for any of those countries. In fact, I know it is untrue for Switzerland, although they did stop using it long ago (mid 20th century). Edit: Norway actually ran a coal power plant until 2023, on Spitsbergen

bramhaag 7mo ago
I agree that the wording is a little misleading. "No coal ever in the electricity mix" is what's stated on the site. It seems they consider only coal use in the 21st century in mainland Europe + UK (i.e. not Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, etc.).

sampo 7mo ago

Estonia has lots of oil shale (not same thing as shale oil). They never needed to import coal, because they have their own fossil fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Estonia#Oil-shale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Estonia#Oil-shale

jnsaff2 7mo ago
This is true. A nuance often missed. Different rock (that is considerably worse in several ways, needs heavy fuel oil to be added to actually burn and has I think even higher co2 output per unit of energy) but kinda the same.

NicuCalcea 7mo ago

Moldova's coal plant is in Transnistria, a territory occupied by Russia. There are no phasing out plans because we have no control over it.

mmooss 7mo ago
You could disconnect from it. That's much easier said than done and probably very complicated by the occupation, but I would guess that disconnecting would reduce coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions proportionally to power usage.
- Zhenya 7mo ago
  Moldavians have bigger problems that greenhouse emissions.
  - mmooss 7mo ago
    Everyone claims to have bigger problems, but greenhouse gas emissions are the biggest problem. Arguably, they are a particularly big problem to Moldovans because Russia's military is funded by greenhouse gas emissions.
  - estimator7292 7mo ago
    Greenhouse gas emissions are a larger existential threat than global war. A global nuclear war might be more catastrophic than unchecked climate change, but probably not by much.
- bloak 7mo ago
  Disconnect from it? If it's connected to some kind of grid then you'd have to disconnect from the whole grid, surely? And if being connected to a grid that contains a coal-fired power station counts as using coal then how many countries are really coal-free?
- NicuCalcea 7mo ago
  Moldova has not purchased any energy from it since 2024. I should also note it is primarily a gas plant, fuelled by extremely cheap (nearly free) gas subsidised by Russia. It only falls back to coal when supply is disrupted, which happened when Ukraine stopped transiting Russian gas on its territory.

deanc 7mo ago

This is now how we should be looking at the problem. It doesn't matter if you burn coal yourself or not. What matters is the source of your energy. Every single one of those countries imports energy from other markets which consume fossil fuels for production.

cjblomqvist 7mo ago
I know at least Sweden has been a net exporter for a long time. It's a little bit complicated (that's what happens in a market economy). Anyhow, we/EU should continue to strive to end coal as an energy source for all countries, be since we can do much better.
- simonask 7mo ago
  The unique geography of the Scandinavian peninsula combined with very low population density makes Sweden a bit less interesting in terms of achieving zero emissions in other geographies, and I doubt Swedes would be cool with expanding hydro and nuclear to the scale required by Germany. But yeah, I mean, good job and all. The answer for the rest of the continent is going to be wind and solar in the medium term, and probably more nuclear in the long term.
  - cjblomqvist 7mo ago
    Totally. Tech neutral state incentives is the way to go for sure, everybody has different environment and context to consider (same within Sweden). Southern Europe has very different opportunities (much better situation for solar for example). Anyway, my comment was in response to the extreme comment (parent) about how all rich countries became rich using fossil fuels - implying that that's the more or less only way to transition from poor to rich. I think it's important to note that that's not necessarily the case. You don't need to destroy the environment to go from poor to rich, even though a lot of countries historically have done it that way (also noteworthy that they did it without knowing about the consequences for the environment).

renhanxue 7mo ago

For Sweden, the coal plants were exclusively for cogeneration (district heating with electricity as a byproduct) and only used as peaker plants in winter. Some of them still exist but have been converted to burn biofuels instead, mostly woodchips and other byproducts from the forestry industry. For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's.

ggm 7mo ago
I may be wrong, but I believe the british experience with biofuels is that although you want to believe its surplus byproduct, the cheapest source is often grown to be fuel for a biofuel generator. It's like soy/corn for ethanol, it isn't sufficiently profitable to do this solely with waste product, you get better margins growing to fulfill the contract.
- endominus 7mo ago
  Even if that were the case, wouldn't it still be an essentially net-zero pollution system (disregarding small contributions from transport etc.)?
  - tpm 7mo ago
    Depends on the input into growing the biomass. If you are using industrial fertilizers, it's very far from net-zero. Besides that, from my memory there are studies analyzing this and I think they found it's never net-zero.
  - youngtaff 7mo ago
    In the British case… it’s being chipped and shipped from Canada and there’s doubts it’s waste wood It makes more sense to leave trees in the ground than burning them to generate energy
- renhanxue 7mo ago
  That may be true in many places, but the Swedish forestry industry is very big, and the district heating plants really do burn mostly forestry byproducts. Of all the biofuel used in Sweden (not just for energy generation), 75% comes from forestry products, and the vast majority of it is either unrefined wood products or byproducts from Kraft process paper manufacturing (like tall oil and turpentine etc). Specifically in district heating, 87% of the forestry-sourced fuel is unrefined wood products. Almost half of it is just bark, branches and treetops. Of all the biomass in an average mature tree logged in Sweden, 43% ends up as pulpwood, 43% as saw timber, 8% gets burned for fuel and the remaining 6% is treetops and branches which also tend to end up burned for fuel. There is definitely a lot of debate in Sweden about sustainable forestry practices, though. The industry really wants to clearcut everything for convenience, but it's really bad for biodiversity and the general public hates it. Source: the report Hållbarare biobränsle i fjärrvärmesektorn, Energiforsk 2023; specifically the charts on pages 14 and 15. Link: https://energiforsk.se/media/33316/2023-979-ha-llbarare-biobra-nslen-fo-r-fja-rrva-rmesektorn.pdf https://energiforsk.se/media/33316/2023-979-ha-llbarare-biob... Addendum: I believe there's also been some studies and experiments involving importing olive pits from the Mediterranean olive oil industry for burning in district heating plants, but I don't think it's been done at scale.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

runarberg 7mo ago

Iceland (never used coal to my knowledge) is missing from the list.

bell-cot 7mo ago
Iceland's situation - tiny population, geothermal paradise - may be difficult for 99% of the world's countries to replicate.
- munk-a 7mo ago
  The US is in an excellent position to massively harness wind and solar and yet right now it's dialing up the coal usage. I am comfortable celebrating Iceland's decision to not be maliciously dependent on fossil fuels.
  - nomel 7mo ago
    > yet right now it's dialing up the coal usage Reference? This seems to be false. Coal is still on decline, while solar is what's ramping up [1][2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67005 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67005 [2] https://ieefa.org/resources/energy-information-administration-us-energy-transition-speed-forward-through-2025 https://ieefa.org/resources/energy-information-administratio...
    - munk-a 7mo ago
      Trump had a few executive orders that derailed phase out plans and the DoE released a coal plant refurbishing subsidy[1]. 1. https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-100-million-restore-americas-coal-plants https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-...
      - nomel 7mo ago
        So, in both cases it's helping sustain. "Ramping up" means increasing. Is there something I'm missing here?

arbuge 7mo ago

> Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway Definitely wrong - Malta has used coal power for example. See for example: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/power-and-energy/maltas-energy-system https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/power-and-energy/mal... "In 1979, a second oil crisis, this time due to the Iranian Revolution, again brought into question Malta’s energy policy and made the government seek alternatives. Between 1982 and 1987, four stream turbines were installed at the Marsa Power Station. This strategy could have worked if the environmental and human health impacts of the coal used at the power station had not caused the local population to protest. In 1987, construction of a new power plant, at Delimara, started; the plant was commissioned in 1994. In the meantime, the Marsa Power Station continued to be improved, with new turbines added to eliminate the use of coal. On January 12, 1995, Malta became independent of coal but consequently became fully dependent on oil."

realaaa 7mo ago

like - never ever used coal power?? very hard to believe this... > Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway

jesterson 7mo ago
It's not true of course. Correct would be to say it perhaps never produced power by coal. But It bought a lot and most of it had come from coal generation.

huhkerrf 7mo ago

> 2038: Germany Well, sure is good the environmentalists shut down the German nuclear plants!

iknowstuff 7mo ago
Was it the environmentalists or the corrupt German government wanting to send more money to Russia for their natural gas via nordstream2
- p_l 7mo ago
  The anti-nuclear position in Germany is very old, and core to the existence of Greenpeace and green parties on DACH region (down to firing RPGs at reactors). Does Russia benefit and probably fund it? Sure. But DACH environmentalism grew from antinuclear protests, not the other way around, and thus will boycott nuclear even when it goes against their modern stated goals.
- kharak 7mo ago
  Sometimes interests intersect.
SvenL 7mo ago
Yes it’s good, but it’s bad that conservative parties still blocking modernization of the power grid/renewables. It would be good if we could modernize our grid to support easier exchange of power from north to south and vise versa.
nixass 7mo ago
> Well, sure is good the environmentalists shut down the German nuclear plants! Shutting down the nukes is inversely proportional to homeopathy popularity in Germany. That says it all
- jwe 7mo ago
  That sounds like a neat statistic. Do you have a source containing the data or better yet a rendered map showing this?