#Encore energy denver co update#
Nikou views the end of Greece’s coal era as inevitable, a belief shared for the rest of the EU by its own policymakers and many experts who argue that coal’s brief return will serve only as a backstop while countries ramp up renewables and update their power grids. “This was the heart of Greece’s energy production,” mine director Antonis Nikou said, speaking at the plant and standing near the Orthodox Christian church of Saint Barbara, the traditional protector of miners, firefighters and others who face danger at work. Excavators use clawed wheels taller than the side of a house to load coal into long lanes of belt conveyers.
The Kozani mine covers an area nearly nine times the size of JFK Airport in New York: A black basin sunk into land surrounded by forests and poppy fields.
Currently, renewables account for about a third of the country’s energy mix. The crisis caught Greece at a difficult moment in its own transition.įor decades, the country relied on the domestic mining of lignite, a low-quality and high-emission type of coal, but recently accelerated plans to close down older power plants, promising to make renewables the main source of Greece’s energy by 2030. Russia also provided 27% of the EU’s oil imports and 46% of its coal imports. Russian gas made up more than 40% of the total gas consumption in the EU last year, leaving the bloc scrambling for alternatives as prices rose and the supply was cut off to several nations. Coal production has been ramped up at the site near the northern Greek city of Kozani as the war in Ukraine forced many European nations to rethink their energy supplies.Ĭoal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war.Įlectricity generated by coal in the European Union jumped by 19% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year earlier, according to the EU’s energy directorate, faster than any other source of power, as tension spiked between Russia and Ukraine and ahead of the invasion in late February. KOZANI, Greece (AP) - At Greece’s largest coal mine, controlled explosions and the roar of giant excavators scooping up blasted rock have once again become routine.
0 kommentar(er)
