It's got to the stage where coal needs to be subsidised to keep the existing plants running while their capacity is replaced. That's understandable and I certainly have no objections to them being propped up commercially for the remaining transition as long as it's done as quickly as possible.
"Four in five coal plants across the European Union are unprofitable and are risking utilities €6.6 billion ($A10.73 billion) in 2019 alone, according to a new report from financial think tank Carbon Tracker.
The report warns that investors and policymakers should prepare for a complete phase-out of coal by 2030, because without enacting heavy subsidies the coal industry will not survive the sustained competition from low-cost wind and solar power and the temporarily cheap natural gas.
According to Carbon Tracker, EU governments will face “intractable problems” if they seek to support coal through the long-term. Governments would need to choose whether or not to pass costs to the utilities and destroy shareholder value, pass costs to consumers and increase electricity bills, or fund coal companies from debt or taxes."
“EU coal generators are haemorrhaging cash because they cannot compete with ever-cheaper renewables and gas and this will only get worse,” said Matt Gray, head of power & utilities at Carbon Tracker and co-author of the report. “Policymakers and investors should prepare to phase out coal by 2030 at the latest.”
The report – Apocoalypse Now, which uses asset-level financial models to analyse the operating economies of every coal plant in the European Union and the losses they face this year – found that EU hard coal generation has fallen 39% since 2018 and resulted in “eye-wateringly low utilisation rates”.
https://www.carbontracker.org/reports/apocoalypse-now/
