Alexandros Kokkinidis is around the same age as the Public Power Corporation (PPC) thermal power plant on the outskirts of his village, Agios Dimitrios, in Kozani, northern Greece.
He cannot remember his village without the massive chimney stacks looming up into the air. “Working at the plant was basically the only way to go for us,” he tells Kathimerini.
He has worked for PPC – either on a fixed-term contract or through a contractor – since 2000, more recently as a supervisor in the engine room. Now, though, after 40 years in operation, the plant is shutting down.
Even though only Unit 5 was still operating, supplying district heating to Kozani, the plant was taken offline on May 15. Apart from marking the end of the lignite age in Greece, the closure will have a significant impact on the lives of the people living in the Western Macedonia basin. “They could have upgraded it – there are technologies for that – and kept the plant alive,” Kokkinidis tells Kathimerini when we visited Agios Dimitrios a few days before the shutdown. “In our village alone, 50 families are going to be directly affected the very next day.”
A giant lignite excavator at the South Field coal mine near the village of Agios Dimitrios, in the regional unit of Kozani. [Alexandros Avramidis]
