Exiting coal in the world by 2027: Engie's climate commitments and challenges - Read more on L'Usine Nouvelle

2024-01-30 04:00:00

Exiting coal in the world by 2027 is one of Engie’s main climate commitments. It is also a major challenge for Catherine MacGregor, the group’s general director since 2021. In Morocco, the group owns 33% of the Safi power plant (1GW) inaugurated in 2018. Essential for the country’s electricity supply, the The asset cannot be closed, as Engie did with the Hazelwood power plant in Australia in 2017 or more recently with coal assets in Peru and Portugal. It will have to be sold, like thermal power plants in Germany, the Netherlands or Brazil. Engie also operates more than 1 gigawatt (GW) of coal thermal power plants in Chile, in the north of the country, in Mejillones, after the closure of its two Tocopilla power plants, a little further north, in 2020 and 2023.

Anticipate the government plan

Unlike the Chilean Colbùn, which intends to operate its power plant located in the south of the country as long as it has the right to do so, Engie explains that these assets will all be closed, and not sold, by the end of 2025. Its competitor Enel has announced be completely exited from coal in 2022 with the closure of its two power plants. As for the main operator of coal-fired power plants in Chile, the American AES, it has so far indicated that it will close only 1.1 GW by 2025, out of the 3 GW it operates in Chile, but without specifying how. They don’t have to. And it is not the country’s carbon tax, at $5 per tonne, that motivates them. But they know they will have to do it. The country has set a target of 70% renewable energy in 2030, with a non-binding plan to phase out coal by 2040, defined in 2019.

A horizon “which could even be anticipated to 2030”, explains Chilean Energy Minister Diego Pardow, who is awaiting a report on the subject next April. Which wouldn’t be so simple. If the first power plants closed “were almost no longer called”those that remain are useful “grid balancing”, recalls the minister. There are also social issues to resolve. “One of the challenges we have seen is the impact on direct employment, but also indirect employment and associated economic activity without the five valleys where the carbon plants are located”explains Diego Pardow.