Repower World Summit 2025

The Repower World Summit 2025 took place in Katowice, Poland, on March 4th – 5th. It was hosted by the Silesian University of Technology, partnering with Quantified Carbon.

This summit was held in the Muzeum Śląskie (Silesian Museum), a former coal mine, turned museum, library and conference venue. This is a fine example of creatively reusing a former coal asset to beneficially serve the local community, and the space highlights the rich industrial, historical and cultural heritage of the region.  

The event was held under the honorary patronage of the Polish Minister for European Union Affairs, Polish Minister of Climate and Environment, Polish Minister of Industry and Polish Minister of State Assets.  

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The summit explored the concept of ‘Repowering’: replacing coal boilers in coal-fired power plants with clean technology. There are many advantages, including:

- Decarbonising the plant - avoiding further fossil fuel burn

- Avoiding stranded assets

- Maintaining existing employment, site, permits and equipment

- Providing a like-for-like replacement of energy production

- Providing electrical energy and district heating to the local community

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Repowering is a sensible and pragmatic solution to decarbonising coal power and is one of the fastest and more economic ways of transitioning to a low carbon future.  2 TW of coal power needs to be replaced with clean energy by 2050 to reach net zero, as per the Paris Agreement. A century’s worth of electricity infrastructure is available, we have the technological know-how - there are enormous economic opportunities to make this work. Repowering is gaining popularity on a global scale. It is a very exciting moment for this movement, and we have been working hard to maximise on the impact of this event.

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The summit gathered world experts in policy, technology, finance, industry and research, government representatives, academics, national energy sector managers, representatives of local authorities, developers and technology providers, engineers, lawyers, economists, our core team and many other interested parties. We were delighted to also have the attendance of vendors, Transmission System Operators (TSOs), power plant and energy company CEOs, politicians, members of Poland’s Ministry of Industry, and economists. Attendees listened to a range of speeches and panel discussions across two days, had opportunities for networking, and were even able to explore a Virtual Reality tour inside a BWRX 300 nuclear reactor, courtesy of GE Hitachi Nuclear!

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For context, the first Repowering summit began in a small meeting room at the ITB University in Bandung, Indonesia in November 2023. About 20 people attended this, mainly academics. The attendees doubled at our second summit in Xiamen, China in April 2024, and this number doubled again at our third summit in Seoul, South Korea in November 2024. The Repower World Summit 2025 was the biggest Repowering event yet organised, the fourth summit on the topic, with 200 attendees. It’s been a dynamic 15 months of growth since the gathering in Indonesia. People around the world are waking up to the potential of the Repowering pathway, governments are changing their policies, scientists and experts around the world are agreeing with and supporting the idea, and projects are starting to be funded. The pathway needs to be widely known.  

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The conversation has moved beyond the academic and theoretical level, and this is a vital development stage – the transition to clean energy affects us all and is important to get it right for our future peace, progress and energy security.  It’s not enough to simply close coal plants in various countries. This strands expensive investments and puts people out of work. If this clean transition is to succeed, there the people connected with the coal industry also need to win, jobs need be sustained and infrastructure must continue to have a value in the upcoming decades. Asset holders and investors will be involved with Repowering projects for a long period of time, and so creating the right revenue, value and financing is essential. A just transition ensures care towards the people, the natural environment, and the socio-economic situation.  

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The summit started with a keynote speech entitled "Global Pathways for Coal Repowering", which was delivered by Staffan Qvist, CEO of Quantified Carbon and founder of Repower Initiative. He discussed how there are 3000 coal power plants which are currently in use, and 700 GW of this capacity is less than 10 years old. Trillions of dollars are invested into these units, and 200 billion tons of CO₂ are currently committed if these run for their full lifespan and if nothing changes from the current system.  

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Coal power plant sites can continue to fill all their current roles in the energy system without the continued burning of fossil fuels, by Repowering or repurposing the sites with new, clean heat sources. Staffan listed some of the benefits he believed are possible:

Reduced CAPEX: Decreases initial capital expenditure by 20-35%

Lower LCOE: Reduces levelized cost of energy by 10-28%

Workforce Retention: Retains 60-70% of local workforce with minor retraining

Investment Retention: Avoids stranding of 40-50% of existing investment

Accelerated Permitting: Speeds up permitting and grid connections.  

Staffan also raised the importance of Thermal Energy Storage being used as the connection route between existing steam cycle equipment and new zero-emissions heat sources.  

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The Repower World Summit 2025 saw 8 different panels across 2 days, on topics such as ‘‘Polish/World strategies for repowering in the energy system’, ‘Energy transition in the context of a just transition’ and ‘Investment Financing Models’. The panels featured presidents and senior leaders of Poland’s largest energy companies, CEOs of companies developing decarbonisation technologies, coal asset owners, and representatives of major utilities and financial institutions.  

Some of the key takeaways from the panels were:

- The importance of the right financing models/electricity market models which allow for affordable costs of energy production from controllable sources

- Recognising and mobilising the existing skills and knowledge of industry, including awareness of standards, quality requirements and industrial tools for new technologies

- Limiting the number of designs for construction projects, to increase standardisation, cost efficiency and scalability

- Increased investments in low-carbon technologies and government policy support

- Enhancing collaboration between stakeholders, including sharing construction strategies for Small Modular Reactors and strategic planning  

- Cohesive action for Europe to remain competitive with China, and the US in their transition to clean energy

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Ning Li, the Founding Dean of the College of Energy, Xiamen University gave a keynote speech on Day 2, points included:

- China extraordinary rapidity in building 5 GW of wind and solar generation capacity a week (equivalent to five large-scale nuclear power plants)

- China reaching its 2030 emissions reductions target 6.5 years early

- His analysis on the deep decarbonisation of energy systems, that is not possible to achieve with renewables and storage alone. The global system is more safe, secure, stable and economical with an appropriate amount of nuclear.  

- Speeding up the deployment of nuclear power, and making it more affordable. Designing modular systems which can be built in factories, instead of on site. Batch construction instead of large-scale projects which can take 10+ years

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It was a fascinating and informative couple of days. Special thanks to Łukasz Bartela, Dorota Homa and our excellent partners at the Silesian University of Technology/DEsire - Platforma Transformacji Energetyki who hosted the summit and gave us such a warm and hospitable Polish welcome.  

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The main partners of the event in Katowice were: PGE GiEK, Tauron PE, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, EDF and ORLEN Synthos Green Energy. .  PGE GiEK is the largest electricity producer in Poland, covering over 30% of energy demand and supplying almost 45 thousand GWh of electricity annually to the national power system. TAURON is one of the largest business entities in Poland, supplying electricity to almost six million customers and employing 19 thousand employees. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy is a technology provider currently focusing on the market deployment of the BWRX-300 nuclear reactor in Poland and the region. EDF is the world’s largest nuclear operator and technology provider. ORLEN Synthos Green Energy play a leading role in implementing safe modular nuclear reactors.  

Partners were also: Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, Ecol Sp. z o.o., Grupa Enea, KKG Legal Kubas Kos Gałkowski, Polskie Towarzystwo Energetyki Cieplnej, Quantified Carbon.

Repower Initiative Summit

The Repower Initiative Summit was hosted by Łukasz Bartela, Head of DEsire– Energy Transition Platform on March 6^th, at the Silesian University of Technology, and was a day of sharing resources and research into different aspects of the Repowering project, for the core team members and academic and business partners of the Repower Initiative.  The co-organisers of this event were the Silesian University of Technology and Quantified Carbon.  

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We would like to celebrate our guests from these foreign institutes who contributed to the two events and presented and shared their latest research and insights.  

Institut Teknologi Bandung, International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Quantified Carbon, Tsinghua University, Xiamen University (Xiamen University) and The Carbon Trust.

It was an opportunity to learn more about the various works our team have been doing on case studies in Southeast Asia, and updates on RepowerScore for 2025, and to discuss where to focus our efforts to accelerate the decarbonisation of coal plants.  

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A very memorable part of this day was a guided tour of the Guido Mine followed by a dinner down in the mine itself. Guido Mine is an historic former coal mine in Zabrze, Silesia, which has now been converted into a tourist attraction, museum and concert/events venue – another smart reuse of a former coal asset. We donned bright yellow helmets and descended in a rattly lift used by former miners to 320m below the surface – Guido is the deepest visitor mine in Europe. They have kept mining equipment from different eras of history in working order, so we were able to see the technological progress from humans crouching under wooden supports, keeping live canaries to test for gas leaks, and using a hammer and chisel to chip away at a coalface block by block, to the modern day mechanical mining machinery which grind out an entire wall at the time.  

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It brought home the enormity of the coal mining industry – 24 million tonnes are still mined globally every day, in noisy, dusty and dangerous conditions. There are ways to power our world without needing to continually dig up and burn chunks of prehistoric vegetable matter, although the move away from coal especially in regions like Silesia, Poland must be carried out with due attention to social aspects.

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Poland's Energy Future

As a follow-up to the two summits, we have recently received the wonderful news that the Polish government’s preference for sitings for new nuclear (beyond the first plant) are now former coal plant sites:

Bełchatów

Konin

Kozienice

Połaniec

For many years, the Coal-to-Nuclear pathway has been analysed and popularised in Poland by the DEsire Project, which is led by Łukasz Bartela. Following promising results from analyses conducted since 2019 by the Qvist-Bartela-Gładysz Team, the project was initiated by the Silesian University of Technology in cooperation with the Polish Department of Nuclear Energy and is financed by The National Centre for Research and Development. We strongly believe that the orientation of policies regarding future nuclear investments in Poland are largely the result of these popularisation efforts. Our congratulations go to the DEsire team for this amazing achievement.  

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If Poland transitions one of these four coal plants to nuclear, it marks the beginning of Repowering a portion of the 2 TW target for coal power (in line with the Paris Agreement for net zero by 2050). While there's still a long way to go, this is a significant step forward. The first site in Poland for C2N investment coverage should be selected this year. Other former coal sites will have their turn after this, as analyses conducted in Poland by many experts have proven that this C2N investment is needed in Polish nuclear power to reach 20 GW.

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Overall, it was a wonderful, educational and energising trip to Poland, thanks to everyone involved, and we look forward to the next Repower Summit!