GREECE

Lignite dominated Greece’s electricity system for decades, but the country only has four operating coal units at two power stations remaining as of July 2025. Greece joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) in 2019, with the government announcing that it would close all coal plants by 2028. In 2020, the country’s biggest electric power company, Public Power Corporation (PPC), decided to cease operating its existing lignite coal plants by 2023, leaving just its 660 megawatt (MW) Ptolemaida Unit 5, which was commissioned in February 2023, to operate until 2028. In April 2022, the Greek government announced that it intended to keep all of its coal plants available until 2028 amidst the prospect of a total Russian fossil gas cutoff.

In April 2021, PPC had announced the Ptolemaida plant would end coal use earlier, by 2025, because of rising carbon permit prices. Later, in January 2024, PPC stated that Ptolemaida Unit 5 would cease burning coal in 2026. Coal power generation in Greece reached a record low in May 2024, and PPC predicted that the country could be coal free by 2026.