September 12, 2025 - Cheap and plentiful coal power helped build modern civilisation, especially in Europe. Of that there is no doubt. Millions that previously had to cook by candlelight or warm their bones by a temperamental fire have had their lives improved by the black stuff.

This is not nostalgia for a bygone age by any means. This columnist’s family hails from the coal-producing parts of Wales, where life was tough and severely curtailed by the production of the fuel. The benefits of it were also mostly enjoyed elsewhere.

But what’s done is done, as they say. There was no real alternative in the early 20th century, nobody really knew about the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on our world and the value of decent working conditions was not exactly a priority.

It is now 2025 and things have changed, for the better. Alternative forms of energy production are now not theoretical, they are out there in the real world, generating power at a much cheaper financial and social cost than coal.

Many countries have replaced their coal usage with those other sources. The United Kingdom turned off its last power plant this time last year, after building out enough offshore wind and solar to keep the lights on.

Others are due to follow suit soon. France, Italy, Denmark, Greece and Spain are all supposed to switch off their burners by 2030.

Europe's largest economy, Germany, however, is due to cling on to coal until 2038. The government has wrestled with that deadline for years and has had to agree huge compensation payments with energy firms, whose investments will be cut short by the phaseout.

According to most climate groups and up to date global warming projections, that 2038 is way out of step with what is actually needed from policymakers. But instead of bringing it forward, Berlin might actually look to delay it further.

That is because Germany is looking to spend billions on new fossil gas power plants to replace coal. Nuclear power was switched off in 2023 and the buildout of renewable replacements has progressed but not at a quick enough pace.

That is why German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has suggested that the 2038 date could be delayed while gas plants are brought online.

Next week, Germany’s government will publish a report about the state of grid connections. It is becoming a bottleneck that clean energy developers are struggling to contend with and could even mean that projects are paused while infrastructure is built.

It is not too dissimilar a story to Poland’s, one of the few European countries planning to exit coal even later than Germany. Renewables are in hot demand there but some major stumbling blocks might prevent the coal phaseout happening earlier than mid-century. Needless to say, that is also far too late.

Offshore wind farms are taking shape in the Baltic Sea, but that takes time and the global market is not in particularly good form at the moment. Onshore wind therefore is seen as a really attractive option for decarbonising the grid.

But Poland’s new climate-sceptic president has vetoed a government bill designed to reform the country’s overtly strict spatial planning rules, which prevent wind turbines from being built across much of the nation.

Whether the Polish government can come up with a solution to that political problem or whether it will simply have to rely on offshore, solar and potentially nuclear to do the heavy lifting remains to be seen.

So under the current trajectory, Germany might cling on to coal because not enough investment has been made in electricity pylons, cables and transformers. It seems like a bad long-term investment but one that is currently politically acceptable.

Poland, meanwhile, wants to get rid of coal but, again, politics is getting in the way of what makes sense from an economical and societal perspective.

Coal, therefore, will stick around in Europe for some time yet unless there is a big change of policy from those two countries. Given their influence on their neighbours' policies, there is also a chance that other countries that are meant to be getting rid of coal might also choose to drag their feet. Coal contagion could be the real climate killer if we are not careful.