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| Wed, 1st Jul 2020 14:02:00 |
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Spain closes nearly half of its coal-fired power stations |
The demise of coal in Spain
The seven plants that have shut generated 4,630 megawatts (MW) of power and provided jobs for around 1,100 people. The four that have filed for permission to shut down create 3,092MW of power and employ around 800 workers.
Some of the coal plants are the only industry for the towns in which they are located. Dismantling the plants will provide work, and the Ministry for Ecological Transition has been pressuring electricity companies to create job plans for affected areas, many of which involve green energy.
El Pais asserts that Spain’s decision to move away from coal was not policy-driven, but rather market- and EU-driven:
These closures appear to have little to do with the Spanish government’s policies. As a matter of fact, the Ministry for Ecological Transition has refused to join an alliance of countries pledging to set a fixed date for phasing out this type of facility. Instead it was the market itself, together with the measures coming out of Brussels, that sounded the death knell for coal.
In short, coal is just no longer profitable or sustainable. The four companies that own the coal-fired plants – Naturgy, Endesa, Viesgo, and Iberdrola – ceased operations to avoid violating a European environmental directive to adopt technology to clean up their emissions.
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