en.Wedoany.com Reported - Greece's Agios Dimitrios coal-fired power plant officially shut down today, leaving the country with only one remaining lignite-fired facility. Commissioned in 1984, the plant had five units supplied by a nearby lignite mine and once ranked as the largest in Greece with an installed capacity of nearly 1,300 megawatts.

Since the implementation of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in 2005, the cost of coal-fired power has continued to rise. The price of EU Allowances (EUAs) has gradually increased, now exceeding 70 euros per tonne of CO₂ equivalent. This has made it difficult for plants like Agios Dimitrios to compete with technologies such as natural gas and renewable energy. In 2025, the plant emitted 2.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, costing up to 200 million euros at current EUA prices. The coal regions of Western Macedonia in Greece and the Megalopolis area on the Peloponnese peninsula are undergoing economic and technological transformation.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the phase-out of coal in 2019. The state-controlled Public Power Corporation (PPC Group) has been shutting down units one by one. The only one currently retained is the Ptolemaida 5 plant, a 660-megawatt state-of-the-art lignite-fired unit scheduled to close by the end of this year, bringing Greece's lignite era to a complete end. PPC Group CEO Georgios Stassis stated that the Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO) did not request the unit to continue operating, only asking for the decommissioning process to be postponed until March 2027, and this scenario would only occur if the country's natural gas imports were affected. According to the plan, Ptolemaida 5 will be converted into a natural gas power plant.

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