Higher coal burn due to war 'negligible' for Europe's emissions – Ember report

Plans by European governments to place coal-fired power plants on standby to guard against possible disruptions to Russian gas supplies will not derail the continent's decarbonization, according to a July 13 report from climate think tank Ember.

Ember said 13.5 GW of coal-fired generation has been made available temporarily in Europe due to concerns about supply security, adding 12% to the EU's existing coal fleet of 109 GW. If they run at 65% capacity through 2023, the plants would add a "negligible" 1.3% to the EU's total CO2 emissions compared with 2021, the think tank said.

As concerns over the availability of natural gas from Russia intensify due to the country's invasion of Ukraine and industry and households in the EU are told to cut back on consumption, coal is playing a more important role in the power mix in countries such as Germany.

Germany is set to place 8.2 GW of hard coal and lignite capacity on standby, Ember said, enabled by new energy security legislation to shore-up energy availability amid rising risk.

Key gas pipeline Nord Stream 1 began 10 days of maintenance July 11, and the German government has voiced fears that the pipeline will not reopen after the work is complete. Higher storage requirements for gas ahead of the winter also mean less is available in the power sector.

Austria, France and the Netherlands have each announced plans to enable more coal-fired generation in the event that Russian gas supplies dry up. France will reopen the 595-MW Emile Huchet 6 plant, and Austria will return the 246-MW Mellach plant from retirement temporarily, running it on coal rather than gas. In the Netherlands, legislation capping coal plant usage was amended in light of the crisis, allowing 4.5 GW of capacity to run fully until the end of 2023.

The standby coal plants will only begin producing when the supply picture worsens, while operational hard-coal power stations have already been running near maximum capacity for a year because of high gas prices. Running additional standby plants at 65% capacity would provide 60 TWh of extra output for Europe, equivalent to 14% of the EU's coal electricity production in 2021, Ember said.

Hard-coal power plant operators started stockpiling coal earlier this year, anticipating Russian sanctions and higher production.

Despite this, Ember said the report's findings reaffirm the belief that a short-term increase in coal burn due to the gas crisis will not derail Europe's net-zero plans.

"No European country has reversed its commitments to phase out coal by 2030 at the latest. The current crisis has acted as a catalyst," Ember said. Gas is no longer seen as a viable transition fuel, the think tank added.

Indeed, policy measures such as the REPowerEU plan — the EU's strategy to pivot away from Russian gas — have boosted renewables targets so that nearly 70% of EU power will come from renewables by the end of the decade.

"Europe finds itself in this urgent situation due to past energy policy mistakes. Despite numerous warning signs, EU member states ignored the risks of over-reliance on imported gas and neglected the need to rapidly replace this with domestic renewables," Sarah Brown, senior analyst at Ember, said in a statement. "Consequently, it now faces the difficult, emergency decision of temporarily relying on coal while substantially ramping up its clean energy deployment."

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