Reopening of a coal-fired power plant: a departure from the many closures decided over the past ten years


The Blénod-lès-Pont-à-Mousson power plant (Meurthe-et-Moselle) was notably shut down in 2014. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN / AFP

FOCUS- The government announced on Sunday that it intended to relaunch the Saint-Avold power station, in Moselle. Emmanuel Macron had promised in 2017 to close them all before 2022.

The government’s announcement on Sunday of the restart next winter “as a precautionof the Saint-Avold (Moselle) coal-fired power plant, given the war in Ukraine, is not really a surprise. However, it runs counter to a desire to close these thermal power stations, which has accelerated since the beginning of the 2010s. Of ten coal-fired power stations in operation ten years ago in metropolitan France, there were only one, in Cordemais, in Loire-Atlantique, after the closure of Saint-Avold last March. “Since 2013, about fifteen coal units representing a capacity of nearly 4 gigawatts (GW) have been shut down and none have been opened.“, we specify at the Ministry of Energy Transition.

SEE ALSO – The Emile Huchet coal-fired power plant is closing its doors… before perhaps having to reopen them

Restarting the Saint-Avold power plant “is part of the closure plan“, we assure the government, which specified that the commitment of the President of the Republic to close all the coal-fired power stations in France remained “unchanged“. It was a campaign promise by Emmanuel Macron in 2017. At the time, mainland France still had four coal-fired power stations, which the one who was then only a simple candidate for the Élysée said he wanted close by 2022. Target not met. The Cordemais plant could even not close until 2026.

Big CO2 emitter

Even with the reopening of Saint-Avold, “we would remain, in any case, below 1% of electricity produced by coal“, indicates the Ministry of Energy Transition. In 2021, coal was only responsible for 0.7% of electricity production in France (3.8 TWh out of 522.9 TWh), according to RTE figures, against for example another 1 .8% in 2017.”Due to the gradual closure of power plants, the production of existing power plants is extremely marginal in the overall mix (2% maximum). The power stations are only used during peak consumption“, we also explain to the office of the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

The decline of this source of electricity has been continuous for several decades. France made the choice very early on to abandon coal for nuclear power. No new coal-fired power plant has been built since 1984. They have therefore closed one after the other, a movement accelerated in the early 2010s by the greater consideration of climate issues. Because coal is a big emitter of CO2. At the beginning of 2020, the government assured that coal-fired power plants represented 30% of greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector – for less than 1.2% of national electricity consumption.

Compared to its European neighbours, France is much less dependent on coal for its electricity production. In 2021, it was on average the source of 15% of European electricity, according to a recent study by the think tank Ember. A share that even rises to 30% in Germany, and even to 80% in Poland. And the use of coal in the EU is expected to increase further in the coming months, due to the reduction in Russian gas supplies.


SEE ALSO – Scotland demolishes its last coal-fired power station



Source link -93