Italy delays closure of its coal-fired power plants by 13 years due to war

Italy will push back the deadline for permanently shutting down its coal-fired power plants by 13 years, to 2038. This is set out in a bill approved today by the lower house of parliament. The move suggests that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government is prepared to ease its climate policies amid growing difficulties in securing energy supplies in connection with the conflict in Iran, Reuters reported.

Italy currently has four coal-fired power plants. Three of them are owned by the country’s largest energy company, Enel. However, the independent climate non-profit ECCO says that two plants lost their permits to burn coal in January, and restarting them would require applications for new permits, a process that takes years.

Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said this month that the plants could be restarted if the conflict in the Middle East triggered an energy crisis. Italy is heavily dependent on gas imports. Rome is therefore facing pressure from industry and consumers over already enormous energy costs rising in response to the war in the Middle East. Other countries, including Germany, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, have also suggested that coal-fired power plants could ease energy problems caused by the war, AFP reported.

Under its 2024 National Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC), Italy was supposed to phase out coal completely by the end of 2025. The new measure, which pushes the deadline back to 2038, still needs Senate approval, but is expected to pass given the government’s support.

The League party, part of the governing coalition and the force behind the delay, said it was “right and responsible” to reconsider the phase-out of coal in light of the current serious international energy crisis. Opposition centre-left parties and environmental organisations, by contrast, condemned the move. The Italian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which advocates environmental protection and sustainable energy, called the decision “a dangerous U-turn in the fight against climate change and a threat to citizens’ health”.

In 2024, Italy, as the presiding country of the G7 group of the world’s leading economies, led negotiations in which the group’s members agreed to end the use of coal in power generation by 2035.

Total coal-fired electricity generation in Italy last year was approximately 2975 gigawatt-hours (GWh). That is less than one percent of total national electricity generation, according to figures from Terna, the state-controlled transmission system operator.