Summary
When the Italian government passed its emergency energy bill this week — tied to a confidence vote that would have collapsed Meloni’s coalition on a loss — the headline was…
The cause is obvious.
Key points
- When the Italian government passed its emergency energy bill this week — tied to a confidence…
- The cause is obvious.
- The solution, for the Meloni government, was equally obvious: keep the coal plants.
- It is worth pausing on what 2038 means.
When the Italian government passed its emergency energy bill this week — tied to a confidence vote that would have collapsed Meloni’s coalition on a loss — the headline was almost reassuringly catastrophist: Italy extending its coal phase-out from 2025 to 2038. Thirteen years. A full generation of climate policy, erased in a single parliamentary session.
The cause is obvious. The Iran war started February 28. The Strait of Hormuz closed. Dutch TTF gas prices nearly doubled to over €60 per megawatt-hour by mid-March. Italy, which had been running its gas storage at just 30% capacity heading into 2026 after a brutal winter, found itself facing a summer refill season with no slack and no cushion.
The solution, for the Meloni government, was equally obvious: keep the coal plants. Torrevaldaliga Nord in Civitavecchia — a port city ninety kilometres north of Rome. Federico II at Brindisi Sud in Puglia, a 2,640 MW station completed between 1991 and 1993. Both had been mothballed by Enel at the end of 2025, with their environmental authorisations expiring December 31st. Italy’s Environment and Energy Security minister said in late March that they could be switched back on immediately, with a government decree, if gas prices rose back above €70 per megawatt-hour. This week’s bill formalises that option — and extends it to 2038.
It is worth pausing on what 2038 means. The original coal phase-out pledge was made in 2017 by a centre-left government under Prime Minister Gentiloni. The mainland deadline was 2025. What happened this week was not a minor adjustment to an unrealistic schedule. It was the repeal of a generational commitment, passed under a confidence vote so that no individual legislator had to go on record supporting it.
Spain Is Right There
Here is the fact that makes Italy’s decision most uncomfortable: Spain faced the same gas shock. Spain imports LNG. Spain is exposed to the Strait of Hormuz. Spain’s gas prices spiked on February 28 too. And Spain did not extend its coal phase-out, because Spain had largely already completed it.
The reason Spain could do that is measurable. By 2026, Spain had grown its renewables penetration to the point where gas sets the marginal electricity price in only 15% of hours — down from 75% in 2019. When gas prices spike, most of Spain’s electricity market is insulated. Spain’s average electricity price in 2026 is running at roughly €66 per megawatt-hour. Italy’s is approaching €130 — roughly double.
This is the gap that coal fills in Italy. Not because coal is the only option, but because Italy did not build the renewable buffer that would make coal unnecessary. Italy installed 6.4 GW of solar in 2025 and now has 90 GW of total renewable capacity. That sounds significant. But the structural question is whether renewable penetration has reached the point where gas no longer sets the electricity price — and in Italy, unlike Spain, it has not.
The Climate Arithmetic Does Not Work
Italy was already undershooting its climate obligations before this week. Under the EU Effort Sharing Regulation, Italy’s non-ETS sector target for 2030 requires a 43.7% reduction. Italy’s own National Energy and Climate Plan puts that figure at 40.6% — already 3.1 points short before a single additional tonne of coal is burned.
Extending Torrevaldaliga and Brindisi to 2038 widens that gap considerably. EU ETS carbon credit purchases will need to cover the shortfall, or Italy will face infraction proceedings. The European Commission has so far said nothing publicly about the Italian coal extension, but it is difficult to see how it is compatible with the EU Fit for 55 targets or the Paris Agreement.
Climate performance analysts have already flagged Italy’s plan as insufficient. The country ranked poorly on the 2026 Climate Change Performance Index, with critics pointing to the National Energy and Climate Plan’s inconsistency with EU obligations. The coal extension adds a large, visible, and politically deliberate new gap on top of that existing deficit.
The Political Economy of the Confidence Vote
It is also worth noting precisely how this bill passed. Meloni’s government attached it to a confidence motion — a procedural move that forces legislators to choose between voting against the bill or triggering a government collapse. It strips individual accountability from the vote. Every MP who supported it can say they were voting for the government, not for coal.
Climate advocacy groups were blunt in their response. The extension was described as a direct step backward for Europe’s climate goals and as evidence that Italy treats climate commitments as conditional — binding in peacetime, optional in an energy crisis. The problem with that framing is that energy crises are not exceptional events. If Italy’s answer to every gas price shock is to extend fossil fuel infrastructure, then the phase-out date is not a real constraint — it is a number that moves when the politics require it.
What This Actually Costs
Italy’s coal reversal solves none of the economic damage the Iran war is inflicting. Confindustria has cut its 2026 GDP growth forecast to just 0.5% and warned that recession — a 0.7% contraction — follows if the conflict persists into Q4. The Bank of Italy has revised inflation upward to 2.5%. Prime Minister Meloni has written to the European Commission arguing that the Stability and Growth Pact should be temporarily suspended — a position Germany has now aligned on.
Coal can substitute for gas in electricity generation at the margin. But Italy’s economic crisis is not primarily an electricity problem. It is a gas price problem, running through industrial energy costs, household bills, and inflation across the whole economy. Burning coal in Civitavecchia does not help the ceramics manufacturer in Modena whose gas bill has doubled, or the logistics company in Milan whose diesel costs have spiked alongside jet fuel.
The POV
Spain and Italy received the same geopolitical shock on the same day. Spain absorbed it. Italy did not. The variable is not the war — it is the twenty years of renewable buildout that Spain conducted and Italy did not, at least not at the pace and scale that would have mattered when the shock arrived.
Italy’s coal extension is not a casualty of the Iran war. It is the cost of a structural gas dependency that was never resolved. When the next gas price crisis comes — and it will come, because gas supply is a geopolitical variable, not a stable engineering constant — Italy will be in the same position it is in today, plus thirteen more years of coal infrastructure to justify. The plants mothballed in December are now legislatively protected to 2038. The path back to a coal exit is now substantially longer than it was a month ago.
That is what happens when an emergency policy is written into permanent law under a confidence vote.
What this means
The solution, for the Meloni government, was equally obvious: keep the coal plants.
It is worth pausing on what 2038 means.
Bottom line
Here is the fact that makes Italy’s decision most uncomfortable: Spain faced the same gas shock.
Sources
- Italy clings to coal-powered plants as EU countries shield from Iran war with renewables — Euronews, April 3, 2026
- Italy pushes coal exit back after gas prices rise — Climate Change News, April 9, 2026
- Iran War: Italy Delays Shutdown of Coal-Fired Plants By 13 Years — Earth.org
- Growth at risk due to wars, tariffs, and uncertainty — Confindustria / Format Research, March 25, 2026
- Decoupled: How Spain cut the link between gas and power prices using renewables — Ember Energy
- Italy’s growth outlook darkens due to Iran conflict, business lobby says — Reuters / Investing.com