Evaluation of the Administrative Phase-Out of Coal Power Plants on the Italian Electricity Market

Although decarbonisation is one of the most important macro-trends of this century, electricity generation from coal power plants is still broadly common. The main goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of a premature coal power plants phase-out on the Italian day-ahead electricity market. For this purpose, two electricity price forecasts, related to different scenarios between 2019 and 2030, and two different hypotheses for the creation of electricity spot price, were compared. The results from the different scenarios show that coal power plants phase-out determines a small variation in electricity price when bid-up is not considered; instead, when operators’ bid-up is included in the study, the price variation becomes relevant.