In December 2017 I co-authored a report with Matt Gray at Carbon Tracker entitled “Lignite of the Living Dead: Below 2°C scenario and strategy analysis for EU coal power investors”. We found that over half of currently operating coal plants in the EU are losing money, and with some reasonable assumptions around the carbon price and the costs of compliance with new tighter air pollution limits, 97% would be unprofitable by 2030.
Using real project costs and adding in learning rates (how quickly costs are coming down) for renewable technologies (which some colleagues have commented are lower than for example IRENA use), we found that building new wind and solar could be cheaper than running existing coal plants by 2024 and 2027 respectively.
Using the same approach as our US report, our asset-level model found a ‘Paris-compliant’ phase-out date for every operating coal unit.
The report made it into Bloomberg, the FT ($), Reuters, and the Guardian to note just a little of the coverage.