Joe Wallace, Wall Street Journal, has an excellent piece on the profitability of coal burning power plants in Europe, here…
”The divergence means coal power plants are getting paid sky-high prices for electricity produced with a fuel whose price has halved over the past month. So far in November, German coal stations have been able to lock in 57.10 euros, equivalent to $64.65, per megawatt-hour of power they will generate in December.
That is more than four times as high as the previous highest level on Argus Media Group records dating back to 2017, apart from this fall. Gas stations, on the other hand, are bleeding €2.26 for every megawatt-hour of baseload power they generate next month. Forward energy and carbon markets show coal power stations will be more profitable than their gas rivals until 2023, said Argus analyst Justin Colley.
Of Europe’s major economies, Germany still has the biggest addiction to coal and lignite. It generated almost 40 gigawatts of electricity from the two fuels in September and October, according to Argus, the most for the time of year since 2018.”
Leave a Reply