The Beyond Fossil Fuels (BFF) campaign saluted the progress of lignite phase-out in Greece in a press release published on 10 June 2024.
The BFF campaign notes that lignite fell to a new low in May 2024 with just 50 GWh of electricity generation from the once national fuel. Moreover, as The Green Tank had highlighted, May also marked a record with the most consecutive hours without lignite in power generation.
At the same time, the BFF campaign mentions PPC’s new strategic business plan for the three-year period 2024 – 2026, presented in January 2024 at the Capital Markets Day in London, according to which it will have stopped using lignite altogether by 2026 – two years earlier than the government’s plans.
On this occasion, Nikos Mantzaris criticized the creation of the Ptolemaida 5 plant, which started operating in December 2022, costing over 1.5 billion euros and is now on the path of becoming a stranded asset. He also warned that a similar fate is expected to befall the new fossil gas plants planned in Greece.
“From the very start, it was clear that Ptolemaida 5 should have never been built. The plant is poised to have the highest electricity production costs in the history of thermal power plants. Greece must avoid making the same mistake by building unnecessary new gas plants, which will become stranded assets, like Ptolemaida 5, in a few years. Instead, it should accelerate investments in more affordable wind, solar, and energy storage technologies,” said The Green Tank’s policy analyst.
