The European Commission plans to help EU coal regions to diversify into renewables, advanced coal technology and become more energy efficient, it said as part of an initiative launched Monday.
The Coal Regions in Transition Platform is part of the EC's strategy to support the EU's overall goal to decarbonize its economy by 2050.
"Electricity from coal is declining. This is an irreversible trend toward clean power ... in Europe," EU climate action and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said Monday.
"There will be certain regions which find it more difficult than others to make this transition ... no region should be left behind when moving away from fossil fuels," he said.
The EC is already supporting coal and carbon-intensive regions through its cohesion policy, which funds projects in the EU's poorest regions.
Earlier in 2017, it set up pilot teams for Greece, Poland and Slovakia in response to requests from those countries. These are to assist the coal regions of western Macedonia, Silesia and Trencin, respectively.
Poland's Upper Silesian coal field accounts for 78.9% of its exploitable hard coal reserves, according to EU coal trade body Eurocoal.
Poland also produces more than 80% of its electricity from coal-fired plants. It is a vocal critic of the EU's decarbonization policies.
The pilot teams aim to help speed up economic diversification through technical assistance, information exchange and talks on relevant EU funds, programs and financing tools, the EC said.
The experiences of these teams are to be shared with the latest platform.
The EC said coal output and use in the EU has been steadily falling in the past few decades.
More mines are expected to close and several EU countries, including the UK and Italy, plan to phase out coal-fired plants.
The initiative aims to help regions adversely impacted by this shift from coal with structural transformations, including deploying renewable energies, eco-innovation and advanced coal technologies, the EC said.
