Mitsaris, whose father additionally labored in coal mining, purchased 44 acres of winery. But he is now questioning if he made the suitable selection — coal right here is refusing to stop.
“I’m afraid about the future,” he mentioned. “I have two young daughters to bring up.”
Just a 12 months in the past, Greece was assured it may shut all current coal-burning vegetation by 2023. It deliberate to construct one final coal plant this 12 months in the broader area the place Mitsaris lives, Western Macedonia, which generates greater than half the nation’s electrical energy. The new plant, Ptolemaida 5, would in 2025 then run on pure gasoline, one other polluting fossil gas, however one which is typically much less carbon-intensive than the lignite, or brown coal, discovered in this a part of Greece.
That entire timeline is now up in smoke.
Already the modifications are obtrusive. In June 2021, coal generated 253.9 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electrical energy. This June, coal was chargeable for 468.1 GWh, almost twice as a lot.
And this is whereas the nation has been battling wildfires on the mainland and its islands, fueled by a scorching heat wave supercharged by local weather change — which comes principally from people’ burning of fossil fuels like coal. The fires have left properties in ashes, individuals have been rescued from seashores and enterprise house owners on islands like Lesbos are dealing with an economically painful vacation season.
Major life decisions, like the place to dwell and work, are tough to make when the federal government’s plans hold altering. For Mitsaris, leaving his village the place he was born and raised is not an possibility proper now.
“My wife used to work in a dairy factory, which also closed few years ago. They offered her a job in Athens but back then my salary was enough to support the whole family, so we decided to stay,” he mentioned. “If I knew that we would end up in the situation we are now, I would have gone to Athens back then.”
The Greek authorities is making an attempt to persuade those who its return to coal is solely non permanent. But coal’s resurgence is tempting individuals in Western Macedonia again into the business.
The PPC power firm has supplied regular employment to 1000’s of individuals in Western Macedonia, the place virtually 1 in 5 are jobless.
Here — the place everybody refers to coal as a “blessing and a curse” — a return to the fossil gas could make all of the distinction between staying and leaving.
Already, so many have left for greater cities, and even moved overseas, to discover new lives.
A village in decay
But the transition has all the time had its challenges — primarily, what alternatives can the nation provide to former employees in coal cities?
In Western Macedonia — which supplies 80% of Greece’s coal — the PPC has expropriated dozens of villages in order that it will possibly mine the coal beneath them, shifting total communities to the peripheries. And they have been the fortunate ones.
During this awkward in-between section — when coal is nonetheless being mined however its years are numbered — residents in the village of Akrini discover themselves unable to transfer, at the same time as all the things round them crumbles.
Residents right here have been in a dispute for greater than a decade with the PPC, saying they’re entitled to compensation that can assist them relocate from the village, which has for years been uncovered to excessive ranges of ash from the coal operations that encompass them. They efficiently lobbied for the suitable to be relocated, which is now enshrined in a 2011 legislation.
The PPC instructed CNN in an electronic mail that it was not chargeable for the individuals in the village, and didn’t reply observe up questions when introduced with the legislation that states they’re entitled to relocation help by 2021.
Charalambos Mouratidis, 26, does not actually know what to do subsequent.
Like Mitsaris, he has sought to make a new life after leaving a job with the PPC at a coal mine, the place his father additionally labored. But Mouratidis by no means had the identical type of job safety as his dad. He labored shifts for eight months on a short-term contract cleansing the ash from the equipment contained in the mine. The instability, low pay and the heavy influence of the poisonous ash on his well being pushed him out of the business.
He now runs a cattle farm, which sits on a hill overlooking Akrini as plumes of smoke and steam rise from the chimneys and cooling towers of the coal vegetation throughout it in the background.
On high of his cattle farming, he works a second job for a photo voltaic panel firm, usually placing in 13 hours a day between them to make ends meet.
Working for the photo voltaic panel firm is a inexperienced job that gives Mouratidis with some additional earnings. But photo voltaic enlargement is additionally taking over extra and extra land, leaving much less for cultivation or grazing, so getting permission to broaden farmland in Akrini is close to not possible, he mentioned.
Besides the photo voltaic farms, all different infrastructure tasks in Akrini have been canceled. The village is being left to slowly die.
“I started farming, hoping to have some kind of a more stable future, and now even that effort is at stake,” Mouratidis mentioned. “Everyone has reached a dead end in this village.”
What’s comes subsequent
The Greek authorities has devised a 7.5 billion euro ($7.9 billion) plan to assist the nation rework from a fossil fuel-based financial system to a inexperienced modern nation. Its Just Transition Development Plan, as these are recognized throughout the European Union, has obtained 1.63 billon euros in EU funding.
Western Macedonia is a focus in the plan and ought to obtain loads of the cash, partly to change into a heart for renewables in the nation. And whereas the plan is welcomed by a lot of individuals right here, many doubt it will possibly all be achieved in the six years earlier than the final coal plant is to go offline.
Mouratidis is skeptical the cash will assist him in any respect.
“I’m not sure that much of it will reach people like me, who run small businesses. Some money will end up with the ones who openly support the current government and the majority of it will stay with those who manage these funds,” he mentioned. “This is what history has shown us. Even during Covid-19, the support given to big companies and businesses was much higher than the support we got.”
But not all hope is misplaced. As many employees flip from coal to agriculture, some EU help is trickling by way of. Just a few kilometers from Akrini, Nikos Koltsidas and Stathis Paschalidis try to create sustainable options for many who have misplaced their jobs in the inexperienced transition, and who’re prepared to get entangled with sheep and goat farming.
“We want to create a network of self-sustainable farms, with respect to the environment and the animals, which will demand very low capital from new farmers,” Paschalidis mentioned, his sheep bleating in the background.
Koltsidas mentioned he wished to unfold the phrase to the native inhabitants that farming is not what it used to be, and can present a secure future. “It doesn’t require the effort it did in the past, where the farmer had to be on the farm the whole day, grazing the animals or milking them with their hands,” he mentioned.
“To those thinking about going back to working in coal, they should look at all the regions that are thriving without it,” he mentioned. “There’s no need to stay stuck in these outdated models of the PPC.”
