Czech Chvaletice power plant plans to end heat supplies by year-end

The brown-coal-fired Chvaletice power plant plans to end heat supplies to the town of Chvaletice and the municipality of Trnávka by the end of this year at the latest. It has reached an agreement on this with its main heat customer and distributor, ČEZ Teplárenská. Gabriela Sáričková Benešová, spokesperson for Pavel Tykač's Sev.en group, which owns the power plant, told the Czech News Agency (CTK) in response to a query. ČEZ Energo is therefore preparing to build replacement natural gas heat sources so that supplies can switch over smoothly. Sáričková Benešová said coal-fired sources are becoming uneconomic and are making increasingly large losses because of the way the European electricity market is structured.

According to Šárka Lapáčková Beránková, ČEZ Group's spokesperson for eastern Bohemia, the end supplier of heat to Chvaletice is ČEZ Teplárenská. The company owns the local distribution network and heat exchanger stations, where heating water is converted into domestic hot water before the heat is distributed to end customers.“The town and ČEZ Group share an interest in preserving the proven district heating system, which will ensure reliable, price-stable and sustainable heat supplies for Chvaletice for decades to come. The aim is also to secure the cooperation of the power plant's owner and successfully manage a smooth transition from coal-based heat supplies to supplies from new low-emission gas sources,“ Lapáčková Beránková said.

„We have agreed with our main heat customer and distributor, ČEZ Teplárenská, to end heat supplies from Chvaletice by the end of this year at the latest. Coal-fired sources are facing a pronounced adverse trend in their economics, with the gap narrowing between falling wholesale electricity prices and rising emissions allowance prices. Although they remain among the lowest-cost sources in Czechia, they are making increasingly large losses because of the way the European electricity market is structured,“ the Sev.en spokesperson said.

„For now, we are looking ahead to 2025 and, although it looks as if we should remain in operation through January 2026, that is only an expert estimate, which could change very quickly in such an unstable and unpredictable market,“ she added.

ČEZ Energo has already obtained an affirmative single environmental statement for a project to modernize the district heating system, install two gas boilers and a cogeneration unit at the heat exchanger station, and build a high-pressure gas connection and gas regulating station. The system will heat domestic hot water and generate electricity.

„From 2026, a company from the ČEZ Group should be supplying our heat. Prices will probably remain the same; it will depend on the price of gas,“ Chvaletice Mayor Renata Dymešová (Pro město Chvaletice) said.

In the town, which has around 3,000 residents, the power plant supplies heat to municipal buildings, including a school, several apartment buildings and some local businesses.

Trnávka is also preparing to switch to another heat supplier. „Supplies will be stopped in August 2025. We have been in talks with ČEZ since November 2024; they visited us and documented the properties concerned, and we are looking for a suitable solution,“ Trnávka Mayor Tereza Veselá (Sdružení občanů Trnávky 1) said.

Chvaletice is the country's youngest brown-coal-fired power plant and has been fully operational since 1979. Its installed capacity is 820 megawatts, and it also produces heat on a smaller scale for Trnávka and Chvaletice. Severní energetická (Sev.en) bought the power plant from ČEZ in 2013 for 4.12 billion crowns. The plant made more than a billion crowns in profit in 2022, but posted a loss of 492 million crowns in 2023. Results for last year are not yet known.

Sev.en Česká energie operates the Kladno and Zlín heating plants, the Chvaletice and Počerady power plants, and two brown-coal mines in northern Bohemia.

ČEZ previously announced plans to end coal-fired power generation by 2030 at the latest. Current government plans envisage phasing out coal by 2033. Sev.en, another major operator of coal-fired units in the Czech Republic, has previously said it has not ruled out scaling them back in the coming years.