Clean energy transition in EU and the crisis in European coal regions

Clean energy transition in EU targets the reduction of CO2 emission from power generation. The decarbonization of power generation leads to a gradual shut down of coal and lignite power plants. In case of hard coal this process is relatively smooth as European hard coal production is in most cases incompetitive and is not sustainable without state aids. EU climate policy is accelerating the phasing out of hard coal industry by refusing to approve state aids. The lignite power generation and domestic lignite mining is economically viable but due to reasons of EU climate policy needs to be phased out as well. This puts European regions with lignite power generation under pressure and potentially leads to a heavy structural crisis. To overcome this support from EU is necessary but there is a lack of dedicated regional policy with adequate funding. “Coal regions in transition” platform set up by EU can be seen only as a forerunner of such a policy in development.