Sinking Greek village highlights nation’s addiction to coal

PTOLEMAIDA, GREECE >> If earthquakes struck in slow motion, the results might be visible in a place like the Greek village of Anargyri, a hardscrabble enclave in a black landscape gutted by coal mining.

The village in northern Greece once had more than 400 people. Now it has fewer than 50, after being torn apart over decades. Its roads are slowly buckling, its door frames have shifted, its walls and home foundations have cracked beyond repair. Residents are leaving not in panic but out of desperation.

One after another, the tiny villages in Greece’s lignite belt have been destroyed by mining as the ground becomes too unsteady to hold homes upright. Bells at one church in the area are not rung regularly for fear of causing more cracks in the walls.

Cattle farmer Michalis Bitas first noticed the damage to homes in Anargyri in 1986.

“That’s when mining started locally. It slowly began to eat up the houses before it went on to eat us up too,” he said.

Bitas is from one of the few dozen households in the village who have refused a

power company’s offer to move them to a rented apartment in a nearby town. These villagers are demanding full compensation for their homes — a right only granted by law if mining occurs directly below a settlement.

“I have sheep and machinery. What am I supposed to do? Move them into an apartment?” Bitas said.

Heavy-duty coal excavators and vehicles on the horizon near the village look like toy trucks, dwarfed by the scale of the blackened mining fields.

Greek is still hooked on coal, despite warnings about the dire consequences of global warming issued both by a new scientific report and experts at the recent U.N. climate talks in Poland and despite ambitious European Union-wide targets to replace coal use with renewable energy.

Greece is currently the world’s 12th largest producer of lignite — known as brown coal — mining 36 million tons annually, according to U.S. federal government energy data. Lignite is a lowgrade coal that throws off higher carbon dioxide emissions than black coal. It is often burned near where it is mined since its low energy density makes it too expensive to transport very far.

Nearly a third of Greece’s electricity is produced by coal-fired plants and the country has no phase-out plan to stop using domestically produced coal, unlike most parts of Western Europe. Despite abundant wind and sun, only around 15 percent of Greece’s energy is produced by renewable sources. Most of its reduction in coal use in recent years has been offset by an increased use of imported natural gas.

Under measures hammered out with Greece’s bailout creditors, the state-controlled power company, PPC, will privatize three coal-fired electricity plants, prolonging their life.

Also, contrary to many of its EU neighbors, Greece is on course to expand its dependence on oil and gas as the nation tries to attract overseas investment to counter a financial crisis that lasted nearly a decade. The Greek government has embarked on a major exploration drive for oil and gas off its western and southern coasts.

THANASSIS STAVRAKIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A landslide damaged road and house are seen in the village of Anargyri near Amynatio town, northern Greece.

THANASSIS STAVRAKIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A crack is seen over religious icons Wednesday inside a Greek Orthodox church of Agios Nikolaos in the village of Rodonas near Amynatio town, northern Greece. One after another, tiny villages in northern Greece’s lignite belt have been destroyed by mining, where there was once thriving village communities there are now very few people hanging on to their homes, with the ground becoming too unsteady to hold homes upright.