Lea Vranicar (WWF Germany)

In the Ruhr area in western Germany steel melts just as cities do and traditions must. Transforming the industrial heart of Germany has been a decades-long experience. While hard coal mining will come to an end this year, other regions can profit from the lessons learned.

The end of hard coal mining in Germany this year does not come as a surprise. It has been carefully planned – driven economically, decided politically and accompanied socially. That is why it can be a good example of how a phase out might also work in other regions.

Delegates from three European countries – Bulgaria, Greece and Poland – came to the Ruhr area at the end of March to discuss just that.

The study trip was part of the EUKI project “Just Transition in Eastern and Southern Europe”, in which representatives of the political and civil arena like mayors, unionists and NGO members work on scalable, economically viable transition plans in those parts of their countries that still rely on coal.

They are aware that coal has no future. Not if the pledges made under the Paris agreement are taken seriously, not if the fight against the climate crisis is taken on fully.

In the Ruhr area, a just transition has already taken place. The “Pott”, as the locals call it, where one city turns into the next, is the industrial heart of Germany. At the height of hard coal mining during the early 1950s, mining accounted for more than a million jobs, about half a million people were directly employed at the mines, says Reiner Priggen, an expert on energy issues and former member of parliament in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. 

But then the economy shifted – and so the phase-out of hard coal mining began.

Multiple development programs were launched, coal mining companies were consolidated. Plus – and this was one of the very important steps on the pathway, says Alexandra Landsberg, who works for the economy ministry of the state – in the 1960s, universities were established in the region. Education and innovation were and are key elements in transforming the area.

For the employees, the coal mining company RAG (Ruhrkohle AG) managed a large amount of the transition with relocations and early retirement plans. Adaption and transition payments by the state and social security respectively further facilitated the shift. Today, only a few thousand employees remain in the mining sector. The industrial workforce in the Ruhr area has made way for jobs in the service sector. “We have more new jobs than we lost old ones”, Landsberg sums up.

In the city of Duisburg, the situation looks a bit different. Here, industrial jobs are still very dominant: Duisburg is home to the largest steel production in Europe. Every tenth resident of Duisburg is connected to it. But transformation is also urgently needed: Duisburg contributes 32 million tons of CO2 every year –incompatible with Germany’s reduction targets and the evolving economic realities of the 21st century. “There is no plan you can just copy and paste to turn the steel production city of Duisburg into a smart sustainable city”, says Dr. Thomas Griebe from the city of Duisburg. But there are ideas. And this summer, there will be a roadmap.

Early planning – one of the most important takeaways of the trip. The earlier all stakeholders know what is coming, the smoother a transition can be, the better it can be managed. And of course, these stakeholders need to be involved in this process. Moreover, when it comes to coal, the plan must entail a fixed end date. For the Bulgarian, Greek and Polish delegations, this was one of the key learnings. In 2007, the German government decided on the end of hard coal mining by 2018, leaving no more room for procrastination.

Developing a roadmap with clear dates is even more important when both time and resources are scarce. Which they are in other European regions phasing-out coal. A fifty-some years long phase-out is a luxury that no longer is applicable nor affordable. When to start a just transition, the answer is now. That holds true for other countries as well as for Germany, especially when it comes to lignite.

The Ruhr area has set an example for transition. Not everything can be copied, but a few ideas might be adapted. And the transition here did not erase traditions. Instead, some former industrial sites have been given a new life: Now tourists come to climb in old factories or dive in former gasometers. And the inner harbour of Duisburg now houses new businesses. Melting the old with the new and the necessary: a concept worth spreading. 

Source: www.just-transition.info

Stavros Mavrogenis (WWF Greece)

Is there a socially acceptable phasing out process for coal mining? What are the impacts on the employees and is there such a thing as a “socially responsible staff adjustment”? What were the challenges for governments, trade unions, the private sector and civil society?

These were just a few of the questions that we were eventually answered after the study trip organized by WWF Germany (19-22/03/2018) in the ex coal-dependent area of Ruhr in Germany. This study trip was part of the project entitled “Just Transition in Southeastern Europe,” which is supported by the European Climate Initiative of the German Ministry of Environment and focuses on three countries in Southeastern Europe, namely Bulgaria, Poland and Greece. 

Relevant stakeholders including local policy-makers, trade unions, representatives of civil society, and journalists from Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, and Poland participated in the study trip, exchanging best practices, knowledge and concerns on the status of Just Transition in their regions for three days in a row. The Rhine-Westphalia area was presented as a best practice case, as by the end of 2018 its last coal mine will seize its operation. 

Coal phase-out in the Ruhr did not happen by accident. On the contrary, it is the end of a long-term planning process that took decades to implement and received huge support from the national and regional budgets. 

It is worth mentioning that in the 1950s more than 500,000 people were employed in the coal mine industry in the whole region. However, after the 1957/1958 coal/steel crisis and the 1968 consolidation of the mining industries in the RAG, the number of employees plummeted to 180,000. In the mid 80s this number further decreased from 80,000 to less than 8,000 last year. At the same time, and according to the trade unions of miners, during the 1960-2015 period the coal industry received €126.6 billion in subsidies, once again reminding us of the constant and unconditional support the federal government has provided to the coal industry.

2007 was a landmark year, as the state decided to phase out coal in a socially acceptable way by the end of 2018. In order to ensure that none of the approximately 37,000 coal miners would be left behind in this 11-year process, €17 billion were spent in establishing early pension schemes for the oldest, career change opportunities for the younger employees and in covering the so-called “eternal” costs, which amount to approximately €220 million per year. These mainly cover expenses to pump water off the ground in order to keep the cities above at a constant level.

Phasing out coal wasn’t an easy decision for the region of Rhine-Westphalia even though coal mining had stopped making economic sense long before – for many years importing coal was cheaper than extracting coal from local mines – as over the years, German miners had developed a strong attachment to the “coal culture”, also based on the belief that their part in reconstructing Germany after the Second World War was crucial. Major political events such as the reunification of Germany and energy crises in the 1970s and 1980s also played their role in the decision to phase out coal. Transforming a large sector of the economy like the coal industry was a Herculean task that took more than three decades, vast amounts of state aid and long-term negotiations among the different stakeholders. 

The negotiation process was the most challenging and difficult part of the transition. Stakeholder engagement means that all key players are sitting at the same table taking decisions about their common future. In other words stakeholder engagement lays the foundation for a more secure and inclusive future that leaves no one behind.

Despite the challenges, Germany did it. Is there any chance that this mindset could find application to other countries in the process of phasing out coal/lignite? Are there any lessons learned from the Ruhr region that can be transferred across scales and coal/lignite-dependent regions in Southeastern Europe?

Greece, Bulgaria and Poland cannot be compared to Germany in terms of resources, budget, the flexibility of the education system and to some extent the culture of social dialogue between the state and the trade unions.

However, there are some lessons from the German experience that could apply to other similar cases.

Lesson one: strategic planning. Change cannot happen from one day to the next. Certainly not between elections cycles that last less than 2.5 years as is very common in Balkan countries. 

Lesson two: stakeholder engagement. Unilateral decisions mean no decisions. All stakeholders should sit around the same table, discuss, suggest solutions, confront each other but in the end, achieve consensus. 

Lesson three: resources. The transition process requires funds. Countries of Southeastern Europe rely on restricted budgets due to the economic crisis, and therefore they are not able to fund large early retirement schemes or the retraining of large numbers of employees for long periods of time. The European Union must step in to cover the extra funding needed for such actions. The establishment of a Just Transition Fund is a sine qua non prerequisite for a more equitable allocation of resources in the countries with poor coal-dependent regions in transition. 

Lesson four: sustainability. Coal/lignite phaseout means more than energy transition. It also involves planning of new sustainable economic activities with a focus on renewable technologies, research and innovation, startups’ ecosystems, ecotourism and sustainable agriculture production. In Duisburg this resulted in the transformation of its previous industrial port (Innenhafen), the biggest inland port of Europe, to an area that hosts commercial and recreational activities and cutting-edge technology firms. In Essen, the Zollverein Coal Mine became part of the UNESCO World Heritage as part of the transition process. Since 2001 it hosts cultural and other outdoor activities with more than one million visitors annually. 

There is no “one size fits all” strategy for the Just Transition to the post-coal era. Every country and every coal-dependent region has its strengths and weaknesses, but we can all learn from each other and realize that there are alternative future pathways which lead to sustainable and equitable growth. The successful Just Transition in the Ruhr region in Germany has demonstrated to everyone that coal phase out is a window of opportunity for change into a brighter future.

Source: www.just-transition.info

Lea Vranicar (WWF Germany)

Costas Poutakidis is not one to give up easily. As the chairman of the local community, he defends his home and its inhabitants – if worst comes to worst, up to the highest court of Greece. Even if that means facing the powerful Public Power Corporation PPC.

Costas’ home is the small village of Akrini in northern Greece. While throngs of people visit the sun-soaked coasts of Greece, only a fraction will have come up here, or even heard of this part of the country. Akrini is part of Western Macedonia, the only region in Greece without any access to the sea, and home to Greece’s coal mining industry.

Driving to Akrini means finding your way on roads that keep changing – depending on the hunger of the mines. In this unusual Greek valley, the landscape is characterized not by picturesque olive orchards or turquoise waters, but by large power plants and deep mines that cut into the ground and the lives of the people.

Like the ones in Akrini. The inhabitants here feel the consequences of coal mining more than others do. Their ground water is polluted with large amounts of hexavelant chromium: 120 micrograms per litre were measured here, a lot more than the 50 micrograms per litre the European Union sets as its limit and even more than the 100 microgram limit in the US – and mind, these limits are for the total amount of chromium, not just hexavelant. “The European laws should be honoured”, Costas tells the group of visitors that came here as part of a WWF-project for Just Transition in Eastern and Southern Europe within the European climate Initiative EUKI.

It is this environmental pollution that caused the village to sue PPC. Costas claims that the high chromium levels in the water are directly related to PPC openly depositing ashes of the burning processes in the lignite plants. When rain washes through them, harmful components can find their way deep into the ground. Just recently, an analysis published in a prominent scientific journal backed Costas and his allies. In 2007, as part of a mandatory study under new environmental regulations, PPC already noted high levels of chromium, Costas says. But this result was not revealed. Only in 2013 did a public test officially confirm the pollution.

“Of course we don’t want PPC to go bankrupt”, Costas says. He knows and honours the economic advantages PPC brought to the area, like the thousands of well-paid jobs. In total, about 10.000 people in Greece still work in the coal industry. But Costas insists the company has to follow the rules. And even here, where coal is all around, the people know that technology is moving on, away from coal towards renewables like solar – a no-brainer in sunny Greece. PPC will have to keep up with the progress and the international demands derived from combating climate change.

Right now, the share of power derived from coal lies at 28 percent in Greece, down from 80 percent in the mid 90’s. 14 coal units are operating – 8 fewer than 2010. The decrease does not stem from a wish to protect the climate, however. Greece’s climate goal for 2020 is weak, the one for 2030 still under debate. The change is purely driven by costs, with several EU directives forcing PPC to spend more money on lignite than they were willing to pay. But even though coal is becoming increasingly expensive and uncompetitive, villages are still being demolished for the sake of mining and a new power plant is built, Ptolemaida V, funded by the German export credit agency Euler-Hermes, backed by the German reconstruction loan corporation KfW.

Tassos Emmanouil can see the new plant from his lookout on top of one of the many hills surrounding the valley of coal. And his former home. His village, Mavropigi, is nestled on a little outskirt of the hill, surrounded on three sides by the mine. Soon, it too will be subsumed by it. “People already started having problems with their buildings from 2000 onwards, because the mine was getting close”, Tassos says. They started talking about leaving and PPC started buying land. In 2013 came a regulation that stated the people of Mavropigi had to sell their land. From the 800 former inhabitants, only two families still live there. The mine has crept closer, overtaking more and more of Mavropigi. All that remains of the local church is the front gate.

Tassos still comes here daily to feed his dog that roams the street of the ghost town. He says it drives him crazy that soon all his memories will be lost. He peeks through the window of a café that his father owned: Protest banners are still stacked against the wall. A symbol of a lost fight, but one that is not even over: A new court ruling set the price per square metre that PPC paid the owners at about half of what it was before. Now PPC wants the money back. “But the people have already spent it on their new houses”, Tassos says.

While Mavropigi will be dust soon, in the nearby town of Anargyroi, the dust has only just settled. Last year, a three-kilometre stretch of street collapsed. Now it just ends abruptly into the mine. There are also huge gaps in the remaining part of the street, and cracks in many of the buildings. While PPC pays the rent of about 200 people, who were directly affected by the landslide and had to relocate from their houses, financing the estimated 40 million Euro resettlement of the rest of the inhabitants is still debated. A committee formed by the Ministry of Environment concluded that natural causes are responsible for the damages. Most people do not believe that. After all, while the mine gnawed at one side of the village, ashes from the power plants were dropped on the elevated other side, thus increasing the pressure on the underlying soil.

Akrini, Mavropigi, Anargyroi – three villages still facing huge challenges, all related to an industry that is rapidly declining. Which opens up even more questions about the future of the entire region. When the coal-related activities in Western Macedonia end due to their increasing costs, what comes next? As much as the inhabitants of the three villages suffered under the mining and burning of coal, there is anxiety in the population about what happens to the region if the state owned PPC does not navigate itself well through the transition to other energy sources. While coal caused many problems, it is still an essential economic factor of the region. However, it’s inevitable that this needs to change, because of the economic and scientific necessity to end coal, it being the single biggest source of global warming.

Lefteris Ioannidis, the mayor of the region’s capitol city Kozani, initiated a new discussion platform, the Forum of Mayors, to address the necessary transition, and to make this transition fair not only for the people whose livelihoods depend on coal, but everyone. The first meeting coincided with the visit of the EUKI delegations from Bulgaria, Germany and Poland in September. Despite recent progress, currently not all stakeholders are on the same page, with some unionists still arguing for prolonging the life of coal for decades to come. It will take more meetings to find and agree on solutions, but it is a first step within the EUKI project and the Forum of Mayors to bring important stakeholders of coal regions together.

While the debate will carry on, others are already moving forward, establishing new economic models for the hopefully soon to be former coal region of Western Macedonia. There is a vineyard producing 600.000 bottles of Greek wine per year. A nearby factory distils organic oils and produces dried herbs and newly patented medicine for bees. “At the beginning people thought we were crazy, opening such a factory in the coal country”, sales manager Christos Itskos says. Now he exports their products to other European countries, the US and Australia.

Right now, these entrepreneurs are only a fraction of business in Western Macedonia. But with the will and the support of national and local governments, universities, unions, NGOs and civil society, and by embracing clean energy as both a way to offset devastating climate change and stimulate economic development, just transition to sustainable business models is possible in Greece, Europe and beyond.

Source: www.just-transition.info

by Sonja van Renssen

Source: energypostweekly.eu

The EU and national governments are stepping up to help Europe’s coal regions find a future in a low-carbon economy. New lignite plants cannot make up for planned closures, is the lesson from Greece. Failure on jobs could doom climate action, is the warning from Germany. “Advanced coal technologies” (with CCS) still merit attention, is the belief at the European Commission, which has created a Platform for Coal Regions in Transition.

“We want to be at the table, not on the menu,” said Benjamin Denis, an advisor at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), at an event on a “just”- in other words, fair – transition for coal mining regions in the EU at the European Parliament in Brussels on 21 June.

The event was organised by WWF and Globe, a network within the Parliament that campaigns to mainstream sustainability. With speakers from Greece, Germany, Bulgaria and Brussels, the aim was to discuss the challenge that European coal mining regions face as Europe commits to decarbonise completely, and how they might respond.

Ten European countries have now announced coal phase-outs – Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK – and the EU as a whole has just signed up to a fresh bout of climate action with two more deals on its Clean Energy Package (see accompanying article). In a new energy governance regulation, it asks Member States to draw up strategies to reach “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible”.

Europe is only starting to deal with the less glamorous side of the energy transition, however: its potential losers. “Transition” means change and inevitably as some move forward, others are left behind. Coal miners are emblematic of this plight, although many energy-intensive industries such as steel and cement are also struggling to adapt.

Both in Brussels and at national level, governments are waking up these problems, but help remains slow and uncertain.

New lignite vs. new activities

The challenge that coal mining regions face in Europe was set out by Nikos Mantzaris, Head of Energy and Climate Policy at WWF Greece, in a presentation on Western Macedonia at the Parliament event. WWF is running a “Just Transition” project in Germany, Greece, Bulgaria and Poland, funded by the German environment ministry. The NGO is developing “quantitative” transition plans for coal regions in Bulgaria and Poland – i.e. calculating potential impacts on jobs and GDP – based on a Greek blueprint for Western Macedonia and best practices in the Ruhr region in Germany.

In Western Macedonia, a lignite heartland, nearly half the GDP and jobs depend on coal mines and power generation. But 3500MW of coal are due to close between now and 2030. Inaction is not an option, Mantzaris stressed: that would result in the loss of over 6,000 jobs and €1.1 billion in GDP. Nor is the construction of new lignite plants going to solve the problem: the one that is already being built (Ptolemaida V) will only recover 20% of the losses, WWF calculates. Add aspirations for a second (Meliti II) and the recovery rate rises to 30%. And that for a price tag of €2.5 billion.

Instead, WWF suggests a series of alternative development scenarios that target non-coal activities from developing renewables to saffron production to eco-tourism. The most ambitious of these would require a comparable investment to the Ptolemaida V + Meliti II plan, but it would create twice as many jobs and more than double the GDP that will be lost from plant retirements. And no, a decision to forego new coal plants would not cause problems for the energy system, Mantzaris said in response to a question from Energy Post – a separate WWF study shows that technically, the system can handle it and economically, energy would actually become cheaper.

Mantzaris welcomed a new “just transition fund” announced by the Greek government that will be based on EU carbon allowance sales, the first in Europe, he said, but pointed out that the €20 million per year foreseen is much less than that for energy-intensives (€50 million) or electricity providers (€100 million). Lefteris Ioannidis, the Mayor of Kozani, capital of Western Macedonia, added that municipalities have been asking for such a fund since 2015.

Societal task

The country that everyone is looking to however is Germany. Germany is Europe’s wealthiest nation and its lignite powerhouse. The country’s climate targets demand a coal phase-out. It is the job of a new “Commission on growth, structural change and employment” – informally called the “Coal Commission” – to work out by when Germany should do this and how to deal with the consequences.

As German environment minister Svenja Schulze said as she opened the 9th annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin at the start of last week, failure on jobs could doom climate action: “I am firmly convinced that the transition must be socially just to be successful, otherwise it will fail.”

The Coal Commission was officially created on 5 June and is due to hold its first meeting today, 26 June.

It’s not just about coal either, noted Stefan Gärtner, head of “spatial capital” research at the Institute of Work & Technology in Gelsenkirchen (the Ruhr) in Germany, at the Parliament event: it’s also about associated industries such as steel production. Germany is looking to learn from past experience of change in the Ruhr region to meet these new challenges.

Structural change is a “societal task”, Gärtner said. The later we leave it, the more expensive and disruptive it usually is. He suggested that the finite nature of lignite supplies could help make the case for action.

Post coal vs. clean coal

The good news is that governments are moving. And not just the Greek or German governments, but the EU as a whole. At the end of last year, the European Commission launched an “EU Platform for Coal Regions in Transition” with the explicit aim of making sure no regions are “left behind” as the EU moves away from fossil fuels.

It’s another brainchild of Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, the Commission’s straight-talking internal energy market Director. He reportedly came up with the idea in a brainstorming session with Poland’s energy minister. Saxony (Germany) heard about it and wanted in and others followed.

The Platform held its first meeting in February this year. A second is due on 12-13 July. The Commission has identified 42 regions across 11 Member States that work with coal. The sector provides direct employment to about a quarter of a million people, most of those (about 40%) in Poland. Brussels wants to get countries thinking about how to transition out of coal and come up with concrete projects to make this happen. Industry and NGO stakeholders are supposed to be part of the process.

The Platform has two working groups: “Post coal economy and structural transformation” and “Clean air, eco-innovation and energy system transformation”. The former is for “those regions that want to stop coal”, in the words of Anna Colucci, who heads up the Platform in DG Energy; the other is “more dedicated to technologies”, for example to help countries improve air quality. These technologies must be compatible with long-term decarbonisation, Colucci stressed at the Parliament’s just transition event.

That doesn’t stop NGOs like WWF from worrying about the Commission’s reference to “advanced coal technologies” however. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) comes to mind. Skeptical NGOs argue that this a dangerous fantasy that we have no time for.

Colucci acknowledged that there is a tension between working groups one and two in the sense that the first is clearly about moving away from coal, while the second could extend its lifespan, for example through CCS. She said that the two groups “encapsulate the situation in Member States”. As things stand now, the Commission’s official view is that “clean” coal could be part of a Paris-compatible European energy mix. Although a flagship European CCS demonstration programme has gone nowhere.

New narrative and funds

Transition is not a foreign concept to many in Europe. Svetoslav Malinov, a Bulgarian MEP, reminded the Parliament’s event about the transition from state to market in Central and Eastern Europe. And identified one big problem: “Those reforms were easy to sell. The Paris Climate Agreement is a much more difficult sell than EU membership.”

The coal sector generates “good” jobs, Malinov argued. Denis from ETUC agreed: a Polish coal miner typically earns 7000 zloty (€1600) gross a month vs. an average salary of just over 4000 zloty (€900). Changing jobs could entail a serious pay cut. Coal miners are strongly unionised too, which helps put a spotlight on their plight. “We lost 80,000 jobs in the last decade in renewables, but no one knew i.e. cared,” said Juliette de Grandpré, a Senior Advisor on climate and energy at WWF Germany.

The Commission is inviting pilot regions to present coal transition strategies and projects. In response, it is creating “operational country teams”. So far there are four: in Slovakia, Poland, Greece and Romania. The Czech Republic will follow this month, and Bulgaria and Spain are next in line. The Commission intends to create a central secretariat for its Platform this year.

Critically, there are no dedicated funds for this just transition work in either the current EU budget or the next one. The Commission is dipping into regional development funds and the EU’s R&D programme, Horizon 2020, for the moment. For the next multiannual financial framework, which will run from 2021-27, Colucci pointed to a stronger focus on climate action as a good sign. She noted too that the Parliament may yet try to secure a dedicated just transition fund (as they tried – and failed – to do in the EU ETS reform).

Denis held up Canada as an example of a country that’s taking the just transition seriously. It has a dedicated task force, deadline and budget (€23 million), and Europe needs the same, he said. If policymakers don’t take the lead, populism will decide what kind of transition we get.

Stavros Mavrogenis (WWF Greece)

The shift from coal to a low-emission or zero-emission economy is now an inevitable reality due to recent changes in European environmental legislation (ETS reform, Industrial Emissions Directive, new Large Combustion Plants Best Reference Document, etc.) and impressive progress in renewables and energy storage technologies. 

The question is no longer whether or not we will abandon coal but when.

However, we have still not addressed the key question: Will this transition be smooth and socially just for those regions in the European Union (EU) which, for decades, have relied on coal, fuelling their economic growth on dirty energy at the expense of their communities’ health and the environment? Or will the changes be ad-hoc and violent, with disastrous effects for the social cohesion of the mining regions?  

The promotion of the Just Transition concept was the main reason for the advocacy trip that WWF organised in Brussels (19-21 June 2018) under the framework of the Just Transition in Eastern and Southern Europe project, funded by the EUKI initiative. Five delegations from WWF offices (Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece as well as the European Policy Office) met with Members of the European Parliament, European Commission officials and national officials from each country’s Permanent Representation to the EU, to discuss the progress of the Just Transition process in the EU. Moreover, on Thursday 21/06 we co-organized with the Group of Progressive MEPs GLOBE a panel discussion in the European Parliament, focusing on the challenges of Just Transition.

The panel of speakers was diverse and included Anna Colucci, a representative of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy; Sirpa Pietikäinen, MEP and GLOBE EU President; Svetoslav Malinov, Bulgarian MEP; Benjamin Denis from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC); Lefteris Ioannidis, mayor of Kozani -Greece’s lignite “capital”; as well as researchers and WWF representatives.

Central to our discussions and contacts was the ambivalence of the EU to develop and implement effective policies for the shift from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels towards sustainable economic activities that would prevent rising unemployment and the financial meltdown of the regions.

On the one hand, the EU demonstrates ambitious goals in the context of the implementation of the Paris Agreement, the updated Clean Energy Package and the recent changes in its legislation (the Pollutant Exchange Directive, new stricter emission limits for large combustion plants, etc.). On the other hand, it has shown no willingness to secure the financial resources needed for the transition of its coal/lignite-dependent regions, while also promoting expensive and ineffective “clean” coal technologies which will prolong the coal-based electricity model.

About a year ago, during the negotiations for the revision of the Emissions Trading System (ETS), a proposal to establish a European Just Transition Fund was not accepted. Member states (not all, unfortunately) can now seek just transition funding from the Modernization Fund.

To address this gap, the European Commission launched in December 2017 the “Coal Regions in Transition Platform”, meant to support the transition coal/lignite-dependent regions. Even though the initiative initially received a positive welcome, it was later severely criticised by NGOs, because of transparency and participatory issues, and because of the focus of its “advanced technologies” stream: until now, the focus has been solely on “clean” coal technologies that perpetuate the use of coal, with no discussion of alternatives to coal.

These concerns were also discussed during the panel event in Brussels. The majority of the speakers agreed that the coal phaseout is inevitable, and that the Coal Platform should be more open to other stakeholders such as civil society organisations and trade unions. Just Transition is a participatory process that requires stakeholders’ engagement and long-term planning. If the EU shows the necessary political will, it can pave the way for the Member States to follow. However, this is not simple.

There are a few challenges that need to be addressed as soon as possible:

Firstly, the EU should make clear that there is no future for the so-called “advanced coal” or “clean coal” technologies. The coal lobby puts a lot of pressure to promote “clean coal” – as this is its last chance to survive – but the EU must resist and leave no doubts that this is not the way forward.

Secondly, the Coal Platform should change its bureaucratic structure from a closed-doors forum to an institution based on participation and accountability.

Thirdly, the EU should more actively engage in the negotiation of the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) with the aim of securing the financial resources for coal/lignite regions. The inclusion of Fair Transition as one of the priorities of the Cohesion Policy and as a financing priority in the Operational Programs will bring benefits for coal/lignite areas.

The text of the Rome Declaration on the 50th anniversary of the EU makes a strong reference to the union’s social pillar and its significant achievements. Just Transition is not just about protecting the environment and tackling climate change. It concerns the future of thousands of workers in coal mines and coal power plants, their families and the future of dozens of regions with millions of citizens who are currently struggling and feeling uncertain about their future. The EU has the moral obligation to show the way towards a future with clean energy, sustainable development and more and better jobs for all.

source: www.just-transition.info

Coal has been at the heart of Europe’s economy for over 100 years. It has introduced considerable economic and social prosperity to communities and has enabled the continent to flourish. Today, the picture is different and although coal still account for around 15% of EU power generation, it is one of the leading generators of CO2, being responsible for around 18% of emissions in the EU alone. In addition to this, coal combustion represents as a major threat to public health globally and is responsible for approximately 23,000 premature deaths in the EU every year.

As emphasised in this discussion paper, transitioning from coal dependency and countering the negative consequences brought by the adjustment is an achievable goal. This paper illustrates that the responsibility of ensuring a just transition lies not only with the front-runners, but with all players. The energy transition, as a proven opportunity for cooperation and development, is one that must be seized by all if the objectives of the EU to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and comply with the Paris Agreement are to be achieved, especially in the context of COP24.

This publication showcases a number of carbon intensive regions that have proven successful or are currently undergoing transition. With the right support, it is evident from this discussion paper that carbon intensive regions can successfully transition to a low carbon future and lead the way in showcasing the art of the possible by ensuring workers have the opportunities and skills required to take on new jobs, and innovate to drive sustainable and economic growth for their own future.

Staying within 1.5 degrees will require rapid economy-wide decarbonisation through a transition process that is unprecedented, both in its scale and its speed. The purpose of this paper is to explore past and ongoing transitions in coal regions and the role innovation plays in such processes. It reviews the existing literature on transitions in five coal regions, all of which are at a different stage of the transition process. From concluded in the case of South Limburg (NL), to ongoing in Alberta (Canada), Ústecký kraj (CZ), Upper Nitra (SK) to barely begun in South-West Oltenia (RO). In each case, we present the national and regional context, the role of champions and veto players, innovation and social support schemes, public and private finance as well as an assessment of the overall timeline and effectiveness of the process. The transitions studied are all driven by declining economic viability of the coal sector, with climate policies having played an indirect role through, for example, the introduction of carbon-pricing and support schemes for renewables. The only exception to this is the historic case of the Province of Limburg as climate policies were nonexistent at the time. Existing transition strategies are developed with a dominant role played by incumbent actors in all cases, while new actors play little to no role. In most cases, the transition is kicked-off by local or regional authorities with civil society playing an important role in triggering a debate. In the Czech Republic, for example, the coal mining regions approached the national government for help in restructuring the regional economy. As coal mining regions tend to be economically weak with low innovation capabilities and politically well-connected incumbent players, efforts to increase innovation capabilities are primarily a political undertaking and driven by public initiatives and investments, rarely the private sector. Measures include the development of higher education institutes, support for R&D and entrepreneurship, provision of venture capital and establishment of funds supporting innovation as well as carbon-pricing in the case of Alberta. Those transition strategies which foresee an explicit phase-out of coal, put social support schemes in a central role. In these cases, re-employment and re-skilling of the existing work force is more important than attracting a new workforce to the region. Those transition strategies that prioritise economic diversification but do not foresee an explicit phase-out of coal, focus on enhancing regional employment opportunities. EU structural and cohesion funds play a central role in financing transitions in European coal regions, especially in Central and Eastern Europe with little private investment. So far, private finance plays a very limited role in financing transition measures. We found no case where tangible financial commitments from the incumbent energy companies existed. The findings suggest that in order to accelerate ongoing transition processes, it will be essential to ensure targeted spending of public funding, including EU sources, as well as a greater mobilisation of private green finance to support the development of innovations in clean energy and industry and their deployment at scale. These efforts should be closely linked to social programmes that seek to develop corresponding skill sets of existing mining workers as well as ensure the attraction of new workers.

In Western Macedonia, Greece, three district heating networks currently in operation, utilize the heat waste from lignite combustion in Public Power Company’s steam-electric power stations, in order to meet the heating needs in Kozani, Ptolemaida and the greater area of Amynteo.

Recent developments in the European environmental legislation and the international climate policy have had, however, a significant financial impact on the Greek electricity market, resulting in an ever decreasing share of lignite in the country’s electricity mix during recent years. At the same time, technological progress allows clean energy to directly compete against lignite; as a result, the future participation of lignite in the Greek electricity mix seems ominous.

Thus, it becomes necessary to examine solutions that will meet the future heating needs in Western Macedonia, which are not based on the combined production of heat and power (cogeneration), using lignite as a fuel. This study investigates the economic viability of proposals in order to meet the district heating needs exclusively from Renewable Energy Sources (RES). The city of Ptolemaida was selected indicatively, although similar solutions can be examined in the case of other cities in Western Macedonia.

Six scenarios were examined consisting of different mixtures of 4 RES technologies, while the city of Ptolemaida in W. Macedonia was used as a case study. The economic evaluation showed that the scenario which combines cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) using solid biomass with CHP from biogas and solar thermal systems and heat pumps, strikes the best balance between economic efficiency and raw material (biomass) requirements, and it may even lead to a reduction of the current prices of heat energy.

It is worth noting that the application of the proposed solutions could contribute to the development of parallel financial activities, such as the installation of hydroponic greenhouse units for the development and exploitation of various agricultural products. The additional income to be generated by these activities can be utilized to subsidize the thermal energy selling price, while at the same time, new professional activities and jobs are expected to be developed, with significant social and environmental secondary financial benefits.

The implementation of the above will contribute to the creation of a sustainable local development model which can partly offset the direct and indirect impact from the expected gradual closing down of PPC’s lignite power stations. It is therefore clear that the dilemma “lignite or oil” in order to meet the thermal needs of the district heating network no longer exists. This study demonstrates economically viable competitive alternatives based on RES, which must be taken into account in the future plans of district heating systems in Western Macedonia.