Just Transition: Mission Impossible? Chapter Two: Most, Czechia
When a visitor arrives in Most by train, he or she has the feeling that time has stood still here since the late 1980s. The town in the Czech Sudetenland was associated with lignite mining throughout the 20th century. The old medieval town was gradually demolished to make way for the mines, and the relocated town took on a new, mostly brutalist look with typical grey prefabricated houses and long, table-like streets. At the time, the redesigned Most was the holy grail of Czechoslovak architecture. An “ideal (socialist) city” in the style of socialist realism.
See also the first chapter on just transition in Bulgaria and Romania:
Coal and mining have shaped the face of this town of more than 60,000 inhabitants in the north of Czechia – and its surroundings. Since the second half of the 19th century, surface and underground mining has changed the local landscape, which in the mid-19th century was still dominated by agriculture, supplemented by vineyards and hop farms. In addition to Lake Komořany, which was turned into farmland in the first half of the 19th century, there were several ponds around Most.
First, the local coal resources fuelled the industrialisation of the Czech lands, the industrial engine of the Habsburg monarchy. Later, they became an important domestic resource for socialist modernisation and industrialisation. What was crucial for the national development, turned out fatal for the region and the town. Life in Most changed considerably after 1989, mainly due to the gradual coal phaseout, but also due to the new economic focus of the post-socialist transformation. The feeling that things have not gone as well here as in the Czech capital, Prague, for example, is not unjustified. But Most can also surprise. For example, along with Vienna, it is the only city in Europe with a completely green public transport system.
I came to Most to find out more about the challenge posed by the current decline in coal mining and the transition processes it is bringing to Most and the entire region, using one particular transformation project, Green Mine, as an example.
“What do you think is Most’s biggest problem?”
– I asked the elderly taxi driver who was taking me to my hotel that evening. “The Roma,” he replied without hesitation or attempts at political correctness.
As I later found out, this is not an uncommon reaction from the locals. It actually has to do with the way the city developed after 1989 during the post-socialist transformation. A large number of Roma from other parts of the country, often from Prague, came to Most thanks to housing speculation, in a model that could only be described as a trade in poverty. Unfortunately, this led to the ghettoisation of Most, a problem which has still not been satisfactorily resolved. It cannot go unnoticed, and the locals talk about it often and openly.
Social exclusion affects a significant part of the population of Most. There are seven social exlusion areas, three of them in the very centre of the town. According to the city hall calculations, about 14,200 people lived in socially excluded sites as of 2023, which makes about 22% of the population of Most!
Most and the Most region are among the most socio-economically deprived places in the Czech Republic.
It regularly has the highest unemployment rate in the country and one of the highest proportions of people with incomplete education or low professional qualifications. According to 2023 statistics, Most, with a population of about 63,000, has 1.4% of people with no education (the national average is 0.6%) and 17.9% of people with primary education (including incomplete), while the national average is 12.5%. Job creation in the city is slow:
‘Most has the lowest number of job vacancies. This is mainly due to the historical development and economic characteristics of the region. Employers in their activities are mainly confronted with the lack of quality human capital due to the low level of education, poorly chosen education”,
I read in the official statement of the city of Most from 2023.
Unfortunately, 2024 was not a good year for Most in this area. The number of unemployed in the district increased again, according to figures from the Czech Statistical Office. There are 8.55 applicants per job, not the worst figure in the country. For comparison, in Prague there are 1.34 applicants per job, while in Děčín, where the situation is the worst in Czechia, there are 15.2 applicants per job. In other words, jobs are being created in the district, but to a lesser extent than elsewhere.
The closure of coal mines is nothing new for Most and the whole of the Ústí nad Labem region. The process has not started with the Green Deal or ‘just transition’. In the past decades, especially after 1989, several lignite opencast mines were closed down here, and Most and the region also have relatively extensive experience with complex operations aimed at rehabilitation of former coal mines territory. The Ležáky mine, which had been in operation since the 1970s, was closed in 1999 and replaced by the Most Lake in 2020 as part of the reclamation process.
Some mines were closed at the beginning or during the 1990s, others later. However, a large part of the local economy is still based on mining, electricity generation in power stations and energy-intensive industries such as chemicals or glass making. Of course, there are also ‘assembly plants’, industrial zones around the town of Most or in nearby Ústí nad Labem, Bílina or Žatec. In other words, jobs are available in energy-intensive, mainly industrial sectors. The transition away from fossil fuels is a major economic and social challenge for the region.
The Ústí Region is characterised by a concentration of employment in large companies, while small and medium-sized enterprises are in a weaker position. After all, even the city of Most itself admits that the local labour market is mainly characterised by “available and cheap labour”, and this has become an attraction for foreign direct investment as part of its comparative advantages.
Locals confirm this situation: finding a good job is a big problem, according to a 60-year-old shop assistant in Most’s largest shopping centre. When I asked her if her salary was anywhere near the statistical average for Czechia, she just laughed bitterly. She could not even tell me the approximate amount of her salary because of company policy; she would (possibly) be fired from her job. But her reaction was quite revealing.
The number of jobs in the Ústí nad Labem Region decreased by 2.2% in 2024, which is not the worst figure in the national perspective. However, this does not bode well for the future, as the Czech economy has recently been experiencing economic problems.
The Czech economic model, on which the country relied in the early 1990s, is being exhausted as a result of a number of structural changes and external pressures. One of the most important of these is the high cost of energy, which is eroding the country’s competitiveness. In this respect, the energy transition is another challenge for the whole Czech economy in a new and rather complex context. It could also be an opportunity, if well understood and exploited. Nevertheless, interviews with local people show that they do not have high hopes for a just transition. They express a considerable degree of scepticism instead.
Between vision and reality: just transition in Czechia
Three regions of the country are affected by the closure of coal mines and just transformation in the Czech Republic: the Karlovy Vary Region, the Moravian-Silesian Region and the Ústí Region. The Operational Programme for Just Transition for the period 2021-2027 has a total budget of CZK 49.7 billion and aims to “ensure sufficient jobs for workers leaving the coal industry and to improve the environment”. The Ústí nad Labem region will receive a total of CZK 18.8 billion, which is 15.8% of the total amount. The Operational Programme from the European Union funds (from the Just Transition Fund) is primarily a grant programme focusing on strategic projects (complex projects with a transformative impact on the regions), thematic calls (project calls according to individual themes and support areas) and finally umbrella projects (which include smaller and similar types of projects).
According to the official document, the Programme for a Just Transition in the Czech Republic, dated February 2024, it is quite clear that the transition away from fossil fuels represents a major challenge for all three coal regions in the Czech Republic:
The coal regions have a significant share of employment in declining sectors compared to other regions. These are mainly coal mining and fossil fuel dependent energy. The total number of people employed in the mineral sector is 31,000. Of these, 9.4 thousand are employed in the Ústí nad Labem Region, 9.0 thousand in the Moravian-Silesian Region and 4.3 thousand in the Karlovy Vary Region. Specifically in the case of the Ústí Region, the Czech government estimates that employment in coal mining will account for 11.4% of the region’s employment in 2021. This shows that in coal regions, mining plays a significant role in the economy and the transition away from coal will have a more far-reaching impact than in other regions – more new jobs will need to be created and more retraining or other elements of active employment policy will need to be provided.
The Czech Environment Ministry adds that the transition process also threatens other sectors of the economy – chemical industry, metal production, foundries and similar energy-intensive activities. The document also reiterates that the coal regions of the Czech Republic suffer from a number of structural economic problems, which are older and often unrelated to the current transition. The new transition is already taking place in a context of structural weakness, and the region has to deal with both the older legacy and the current transformation.
As the European Commission noted in 2020, “the impact of transition could be exacerbated by the fact that these areas are already among the poorest in the country”. And the Commission further concluded that the transition process for the Czech coal regions “will entail significant job losses, which in real terms may not be fully compensated by the creation and development of SMEs”. According to the EC, the structural problems of the coal regions must be tackled by diversifying the regional economy. This is to be supported by resources (grants) from the Just Transition Fund in the recommended areas.
One of the important conditions for the transition away from fossil fuels in the context of the support programme is the “polluter pays” principle, which applies primarily to land development projects. This principle is intended to guide the provision of support from public funds. Specifically, under the Programme for the Rehabilitation of Mining Contaminated Areas, mining companies are obliged to ensure the rehabilitation and reclamation of land affected by mining and to provide compensation for mining damage. Without reclamation, it is basically impossible to start any further projects, obtain building permits, etc. It should not even be possible to apply for European or national subsidies for further economic activities.
This problem has been highlighted by the Czech non-governmental platform for social-ecological transformation Re-set, which states in its document Seven Principles for a Truly Just Transition: “A truly just transition must not affect the basic needs of ordinary people. Its costs should be borne primarily by the biggest polluters and those who can afford to cut back without compromising their lives and dignity. It offers to reduce emissions first where they affect luxury over-consumption, not the livelihoods of ordinary people”. The Platform also expressed concern that the ‘polluter pays’ principle is not sufficiently reflected in the Just Transition agenda itself in the Czech context.
The official vision of transition, according to the government programme, in the case of the Ústí nad Labem region is an overall increase in economic activity with an emphasis on high value-added industries, diversification of the economy and increase in competitiveness, creation of new jobs and preservation of jobs in traditional industries (chemical industry, glass and porcelain production, energy), the creation of innovation infrastructure, the development of the hydrogen economy and renewable energy sources, the development of digital services, the transition to a circular economy, the rehabilitation of post-mining areas, the improvement of secondary and extracurricular education, and the enhancement of people’s readiness for the changes brought about by the transition.
The Territorial Just Transition Plan, prepared by the Ministry of Regional Development, sets out more specific expectations of the transformation process. It states that the process will bring both a decline in mining and the associated loss of jobs, as well as a reduction in employment in downstream sectors, a change in training and skills needs, and the search for new sources of energy and materials. On the other hand, the same process is expected to lead to the development of digitalisation and robotics, a focus on research and innovation, reclamation and revitalisation, and ensuring social stabilisation and inclusion.
The Ústí nad Labem Region currently has its own Strategy for the Development of the Ústí nad Labem Region, valid until 2027, which builds on the government strategy in a regional context. The strategy divides the region into several territories and sets development priorities according to their nature. In the case of the Most region, the aim is to increase the social capital of the population, improve the living environment, increase economic competitiveness and complete the restoration of the landscape.
The development strategy identifies the following the main problems of the Most region (and the entire basin area, which includes Chomutov, Litvínov, Teplice and Kadaň): unfavourable demographic trend, a low level of entrepreneurial activity and, on the contrary, an above-average proportion of people employed in industry and the highest proportion of long-term unemployed (in the region, but also in the Czech Republic). This raises the issue of social capital, but also of unfavourable demography and social exclusion.
The village of Lišnice is today more of a suburb of Most.
In December 2024, in the small village of Lišnice, I met Kamila Krejčová, manager and director of the Local Action Group (LAG) Naděje, which focuses on local development issues. Local Action Groups are communities made up of public and private organisations in a particular place that work together on local development issues. I wanted to know what she saw as the main problems in the region and what the just transition and coal phase-out meant for the region. Of course, I was also interested in how she, as a person who is close to the place, as opposed to government or regional documents, sees alternatives and further possibilities for the development of Most and Ústí nad Labem.
The village of Lišnice is easily accessible by bus. In fact, nowadays it is a suburb of Most. Not far away, there is the Počerady power station, owned by Petr Tykač’s Sev.en group. The plant is currently being criticised by environmentalists for exceeding mercury emission limits with the blessing of the state.
The village is a paradox. The visitor can see the repaired and landscaped private houses, as well as the small park near the community centre and other public spaces that have been renovated. On the other hand, the original centre of the village is surprisingly neglected. The old brewery in the village square is literally falling apart, and the Lišnice manor house, with its untidy courtyard and peeling plaster, is a reminder of the socialist era of unified farming. Both buildings have been privatized, as my interlocutor explained to me. According to Krejčová, this is one of the typical problems of the region brought about by the 1990s and the post-socialist transformation.
Ústí and Labem Region is characterised by unused brownfield sites and similarly unused and dilapidated properties, often in private hands. In addition, deindustrialisation and the decline of mining in the 1990s brought other negative effects: job losses, high unemployment and social problems.
But what are the main problems facing the development of the Ústí Region and Most today?
According to Krejčová, the main problem of the region is the dependence of the population on industry -energy, chemicals or engineering sector. In the second place, she speaks of cheap labour, followed by social problems, a low educational structure, a significant Roma minority and many socially excluded localities. Krejčová pointed out that young people are leaving the region because there are not enough job opportunities. At the same time, the region is not attracting qualified graduates and lacks a strong regional identity and sense of community. This is the direct result of historical heritege: the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after 1945 and the post-war Czechoslovak ‘colonisation’.
Karel Tichý, an expert from the Economic and Social Council of the Ústí and Labem Region, with whom I had the opportunity to discuss the region’s prospects, also sees problematic social stratification and a lack of regional identity as one of the main problems, just as important as just transition. According to Tichý, the region is also characterised by the uprooting of people due to coal mining and the destruction of entire villages. People have no way of connecting with each other or learning about their parents’ or grandparents’ past, as many villages and human settlements in the Ústí and Labem region have disappeared when the opencast mines were extended. It should be added that uprooting also affects Roma communities in the region, although it is an issue of a different quality (with different causes).
“We have mined, villages have been destroyed, Most has been demolished, and so on, but the Republic is not giving it back completely,” said Kamila Krejčová about the impact of coal mining in the region, referring to the typical consequences of the exploitative economic model. A similar view was expressed by a trade union leader from Sev.en, Jaromír Franta. “People used to come to the region to work, and our coal and chemical industries were the pillars of the whole republic. Today, other regions are supposed to give something back to us. There is an uncontrolled exodus from coal, which will affect the whole country, industry and every household” – he told me.
Kamila Krejčová is more optimistic and sees the decline of coal mining and the subsequent transformation as a risk, but also as a great opportunity. She is also convinced that people from the ČSA opencast mine in particular “will integrate into the workforce if they want to”. According to Krejčová, support from the state is important, but the rest is up to the people, and relying on the state for everything is not a good idea.
In her view, change is a natural thing: “Throughout history, there have been many trades that disappeared, and people had to react”.
But people directly affected by job losses are less optimistic.
When asked what should be important for a fair transformation of the Ústí nad Labem region, Jaromír Franta, a trade union leader from Sev.en, replied: “First of all, we need job opportunities for all generations”. But Franta is also convinced that “ecological projects and investments in tourism development will not save the region”. What the region needs for its future, he says, are “opportunities that will move the region forward, feed the region and make people stay here”.
Kamila Krejčová was a little more specific: the future of the region is still energy, but in a new direction, IT technologies, some crafts and electromobility. According to Krejčová, there is money in the region thanks to the Operational Programme of Just Transformation (OPJT), but given all the problems in the region, “it’s a black hole”. One of the problems, she said, was that many mayors did not know how to use the money. Karel Tichý, from the Economic and Social Council of the Ústí nad Labem Region, stressed that the future strategic plans of the Ústí nad Labem Region include “a strategy of ‘smart specialisation’, which defines pro-growth sectors in which the region sees some prospects. Of course, these are many industries that have the potential to somehow use what we have been able to do here in the past. Quite simply, what the infrastructure here is ready for, even if it needs some rebuilding; what the human resources are available for; or what we have the potential and the capacity of educational institutions here to train human resources competently. According to Tichý, this should include fields such as chemistry, energy, engineering or, as part of the strategy of “smart specialisation”, technologies such as nanomaterials, a field that the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem is successfully pursuing in terms of research and development. The reliance on modern technology and science and research seems particularly important in the context of the plans, but has long been undervalued in the national context. Within the EU, Czech spending on science and research has long been below average and has even fallen slightly recently.
The view from Jezeří castle of the opencast mine is, in a way, impressive. It is as if a vast “lunar” landscape has opened up before you. Both the mine and the castle were featured in a successful Czech HBO series called Wasteland, where they illustrated the dark atmosphere of a crime series set against the backdrop of coal mining and the social problems typical of the region, which the Czech political mainstream is still reluctant to talk about, especially in connection with the transition process of the 1990s. In recent years, however, Most has also been associated in the minds of Czech viewers with the comedy series Most, which drew heavily on the local social milieu. The landscape destroyed by mining is unfortunately typical of the Ústí nad Labem region, which has the largest area affected by direct coal mining in the country.
The view from Jezeří castle of the opencast mine is, in a way, impressive. It is as if a vast “lunar” landscape has opened up before you.
There has been a opencast mine near Most since the beginning of the 20th century, when the Hedvika mine was established on this site, renamed after the WWI as the President Roosevelt Mine and then in 1958 as the Czechoslovak Army (ČSA) Mine. The whole area of the mine was originally, i.e. before the beginning of coal mining, a lake called Komořany, which was drained by the Bílina River. The development of the opencast mine to its giant dimenstions dates back to the 1950s, when the shortage of coal needed to be made up for to make the socialist industrialisation of post-war Czechoslovakia. Gradually, the quarry expanded into the surrounding area, swallowing up several villages. Even several medieval churches fell victim to the mine, with the exception of the Dean’s Church in Most, moved from its original location to a new one with great pomp in 1975.
In the 1990s, the ČSA opencast mine was the subject of the controversial privatisation of Mostecká uhelná, which until then had, been owned by the Czechoslovak state. After all, coal was a strategic domestic resource that did not need to be imported.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the company was first privatised in a voucher privatisation, but the state retained a 46% stake; at the end of the 1990s, under strange circumstances, the company was fully privatised. The Mostecká uhelná case was referred to the Swiss courts on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, and is still under investigation in the Czech Republic. The vicissitudes of privatisation eventually led to the break-up of the group (under the new name Czech Coal N.V.) in 2008, with the quarry becoming the property of Pavel Tykač and his company Sev.en (Severní energetická). In addition to the ČSA quarry, this company is involved in the production of electricity and heat – it owns power plants in Počerady and Chvaletice, heating plants in Kladno and Zlín, a coal processing plant in Komořany and several other mines. The company’s owner, Petr Tykač, is one of the most influential Czech coal miners and in recent years has openly ‘bet’ on fossil fuels outside Europe, mainly in the US and Australia. The energy crisis has paid off for him too. By 2022, the operating profit (EBITDA) of Tykač’s empire had more than sextupled, reaching €2.5 billion. According to Forbes, Petr Tykač’s estimated wealth doubled to 84 billion crowns in 2022 (in 2021, Tykač’s wealth was estimated at 33.4 billion crowns). In 2024, according to Forbes, Tykač is the fourth richest Czech with a fortune of 175 billion crowns (about 7 billion euros), which means that he has become four times richer since 2021. Fossil energy is still an important source of wealth for some.
Pavel Tykač, through his companies, has also quietly invested in a stake in the state-owned energy company ČEZ, owns a stake in the Czech bank Moneta, and there has been speculation that he wants to buy the publishing house MAFRA, which publishes one of the most widely read Czech dailies (owned for some time by another Czech oligarch and former prime minister, Andrej Babiš, at the time he entered Czech politics). Tykač has also become a new sponsor of the Václav Klaus Institute (VKI), one of the long-standing critics of ‘green’ politics. Speculation about the purchase of the MAFRA publishing house and support for the VKI suggest that Tykač is coming out of the shadows and has public ambitions. However, this does not fit well with his current investment activities. In the Czech case, Tykač has long made it clear that he will stick with coal as long as it is financially profitable for him. For him, the public interest is a matter for politicians: “I am ready to operate coal as long as I do not make an obvious profit from it. And I have to ask the government what it thinks of it at the moment when it no longer makes economic sense,” Tykač said in an interview in December about how he sees the future of his coal business in the Czech Republic. As for future plans, he added: “We feel more like a foreign company today, with 95 or 99 per cent of our free cash invested abroad – where it makes sense”. It should be added that the overseas investments are largely the result of his highly profitable bet on the Czech energy sector in recent years. This is nothing new. In the past (2006-2016), Tykač, through his Cypriot company, has already taken about CZK 22 billion in untaxed dividends out of the Czech Republic, as reported by Deník Referendum.
The Green Mine project
The strategic Green Mine project, which is to replace the lunar landscape of the ČSA opencast mine, looks spectacular at first glance.
According to Sev.en’s official presentation, it will be replaced by a whole complex of new investment buildings and restored nature areas. At the heart of the entire rehabilitation project is the new Komořany Lake, used as a water reservoir until the first half of the 19th century. According to the official presentation, the project will cover a total area of about 45 km2 and will combine several tasks. Firstly, energy: the annual production of photovoltaic energy here will be equivalent to 600 MW of electricity, while saving 236,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year thanks to green energy sources. The project also envisaged the production of up to 2,891 tonnes of H2, the equivalent of 145,000 tanks for a hydrogen-powered bus. However, as we shall see, the project ran into problems when it came to producing green hydrogen energy. In addition to photovoltaics and hydrogen technology (electricity generated by electrolysis), the project also includes a pumped hydro power station.
But Green Mine is not just about producing green energy using green technologies. It will also be a place for modern agriculture – specifically aquaponics, a combination of fish farming and growing plants in solution (and in a greenhouse) without soil, using fish excrement as fertiliser. This method of agricultural production is relatively independent of the external environment and is a closed cycle. In the first phase, the project plans to grow trout and lettuce, with the roofs of the greenhouses being used for photovoltaic energy generation. This should provide enough energy for the aquaponic farm to be energy self-sufficient. The project does not specify the size of the planned aquaponic farm.
Other parts of the revitalisation of the former quarry include a science and industry centre with a focus on ‘climate tech’. The centre will combine research and development in renewable energy, energy storage and recycling technologies, as well as manufacturing and industrial production. In doing so, the Sev.en group promises to contribute to “regional competitiveness” through research, development, technological development and innovation, which the presentation (but not only it, as most government documents show) says is key.
In addition to its energy function, agricultural production and scientific research, the Green Mine is also supposed to offer recreational opportunities and thus the development of tourism, as well as a new place to live – the smart settlement of Nové Komořany, which is to be built around the Bílina River as an energy-self-sufficient settlement using renewable energy sources. Significantly, the group promises that the entire Green Mine project will create around 1,000 new jobs. The entire investment project is expected to be completed by the end of 2029, five years after the end of coal mining at the CSA opencast mine.
However, as we will see, there are some “buts”.
Such a rehabilitation project obviously costs something. According to initial estimates, the amount spent on the entire project was approximately CZK 1,291,340,573. Of this amount, CZK 785,760,279 was to come from the Operational Programme Just Transformation, and the remaining CZK 505,580,294 was to be invested by the Sev.en Group and other investors. The Group, as the polluter, was to carry out post-mining reclamation works at its own expense. This should be in line with the principle that the polluter is legally obliged to bear the costs of post-mining rehabilitation as a result of its economic and profit-oriented private activity. In the past, some doubts have been raised about Tykač’s obligation to reclaim the land. A 2022 report by Czech Television spoke about the lack of money in the company’s reclamation escrow account. It was supposed to be 1.4 billion crowns. However, the company claimed that these were debts incurred before the company came under Tykač’s ownership. It turned out that the debts were not only related to Sev.en, but also to other companies owned by Pavel Tykač in northern Bohemia .According to the report, his company Vršovanská uhelná owed up to CZK 2.2 billion.
At the time, Pavel Tykač’s spokesman said: ‘Of course, there will always be enough money for the approved rehabilitation and reclamation of the landscape after the end of mining’. The report marvelled at the fact that, despite these debts in the escrow account, the company applied for European public subsidies (because of its obligation as a polluter). According to other available information, the company has agreed with the state to defer repayment of the escrow account debt for mandatory reclamation until 2033. Concerns have been raised in the media that the company may be paying for mandatory reclamation with grant money. Another was that part of the reclamation of the quarry would be done without human intervention, i.e. the area would be left to nature to take care of itself without human intervention and therefore without additional costs. In this case, the money earmarked for reclamation would be made available to the surrounding communities. This is said to amount to hundreds of millions of crowns. The Ministry of the Environment considers such an arrangement to be the best, as it means that the polluter will fulfil its obligations to reclaim the land. The technical details of the agreement are not yet known.
Jobs! Jobs?
In May 2024, redundancies began at the ČSA opencast mne in Most. Sev.en announced that they would initially affect around 500 people during the summer, and in June 2024 the company announced that it would lay off a further 400 employees by the end of 2024. The outlook for 2025 was unclear. However, more layoffs are likely as mining continues to be curtailed. As I mentioned earlier, the European Commission assumed that a total of 5,000 people would be affected in the Ústí and Labem and Karlovy Vary regions in mining, 3,600 in coal-fired power plants and 10,000 in indirect jobs (this is an aggregate figure for the Ústí and Labem and Karlovy Vary regions, but 3,000 people work in coal mining). The closure of a mine – deep or opencast – always has a multiplier effect, affecting the entire supply chain. The job losses are then greater than in mining only, and are gradual as local companies have to react to the situation. In other words, the loss of 900 jobs by 2024 is just the beginning.
Interviews with local people revealed that concerns about employment in Most are very strong and still present. And not without reason.
Most had and still has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and the problem has not been addressed for a long time. But locals also complain about the quality of jobs and the quality of life. “Life is hard up here in the north,” said a shop assistant in a shopping centre in Most, complaining not only about the quality of jobs but also about working conditions. As a number of studies and the region’s own plans, the city of Most, the Czech government and the European Commission have shown, employment is a key issue for a just transition. It is also a key issue for the transformation of the regional economy; the two should go hand in hand. It is not just about the number of jobs, but also about their quality in terms of satisfactory conditions and remuneration for people, and in terms of added value and the future of the region.
One of the issues of equitable transformation is that it should be a genuinely transformative process, delivering real improvements for the region and its workers. However, some projects raise concerns that their essence is dependency, i.e. following the model of the past.
In the case of the Ústí nad Labem region, this was the case, for example, with the strategic gigafactory project in Prunéřov or the lithium mining project in Cínovec. The first project followed the “assembly plant” strategy, but according to official information, the applicant withdrew from the project. However, the project was supposed to create jobs for 3,000 people (500 of which would have been university places). It is worth noting, however, that the project required foreign “technology partners” to implement it, once again demonstrating the country’s dependence on imported technology. The second project again reproduces an unsustainable mining model with environmental impacts. The only difference is that it is about lithium, not coal.
I asked Se.ven what specific types of jobs the Green Mine project will provide in addition to the promised 1,000. I wanted to know how the new project would fit in with local development needs and priorities, as mentioned in government and regional documents and by experts. I got the answer from Vladimír Zemánek, the manager of the development and transformation activities of the Sev.en Group. He pointed out that the figure of 1,000 jobs “refers to the long-term vision of the resocialisation and revitalisation of the ČSA quarry area, at least until 2050”. According to him, it is a “vision” in this timeframe of almost thirty years in the future. In other words, it is the job potential of the whole project in the long term.
The next question was what kind of jobs. Zemánek said that the assumption is that “the jobs will be primarily technical, assembly and blue-collar jobs, with the specific job content depending on the type of technology and industrial use that will be implemented in the area. For example, it could be the production or assembly of components for advanced energy or industrial technologies. As part of the cooperation with universities and research organisations in the OPJT-supported part of the project, a key objective is also to build facilities that will be attractive to investors with their own research and development”. But much will depend on the investors with whom negotiations are underway. It seems that jobs at the Green Mine site will be created over a longer period of time and will be technical, i.e. assembly and blue-collar jobs, but some scientific and research opportunities are not excluded. The long-term horizon of the project means that the project has little relevance for people who are losing their jobs today.
In public, Sev.en has repeatedly referred to the redundancies from the opencast mine as an issue that the company and the Labour Office have handled well, claiming that the redundancies in June did not have a negative social impact. This was confirmed by Jaromír Franta, the leader of the Most trade union at Sev.en, who told me that the June labour exchange was indeed a success. According to the trade unionist, the main advantage of the dismissed people is that they have good work habits and are not afraid of work. However, problems remain in the area of skills: “Companies were happy to take our people even if their skills did not match the demand. It was more important to them that they had work habits, could be counted on to come to work and wanted to work. Everything else they would learn. And that’s the challenge. If you’ve worked in a quarry for thirty years on one machine, it’s very difficult to learn another job and meet the demands of a new employer. But Most was not so optimistic about the future: “It’s true that the demand from companies in the region for our people was great, and those who really wanted a job got one. But this was only the first wave. The labour market will gradually become saturated, and I’m not talking about people who have gradually left because their employer was closely linked to mining. If there is another downturn in mining and there are more redundancies, the region will have a problem.
These concerns are not unique. Back in 2020, the Czech Energy Workers’ Union conducted a survey of workers in the industry about their perceptions of the decline of coal mining and its use for energy. Over 62% of respondents had an overall negative perception (and only 7.1% positive). Overall, over 63% of the workers surveyed were (rather) concerned about unemployment (about 31.8% yes, 33.5% rather yes). However, more than 71% of the respondents also said that they were willing to retrain. Most of them expected support from the state, either as someone who would help people to retrain (38.9%) or as an actor who would guarantee and possibly compensate workers for their current standard of living (41.2%). In terms of qualifications, people with a high school diploma (46%) or an apprenticeship (33%) predominated among the respondents, which was also reflected in the job positions: a large proportion, 60% in total, were operational workers, 28% of the respondents were people with a specialisation in the field. The survey also revealed the average socio-demographic profile of employees in the energy sector. Overall, almost 79% of the respondents are aged 41 and over (almost 25% are aged over 55 and the majority (54%) are aged between 41 and 55). This means that a large proportion of the workforce is middle-aged or pre-retired, which tends to be a handicap on the labour market.
Union leader Franta also sees this as a problem in the case of the ČSA mine in Most: “Our people have been used to concrete work for many years. They are good at it, but they have reached an age where it is difficult to adapt or learn new skills. We are talking about people over 50 who have been working in the mine since they were at school”.
Franta also said that some of the laid-off workers at the ČSA opencast mine have chosen to rely on casual income for the time being and then take (early) retirement. Specifically, the age of eligibility for a miner’s pension in the Czech Republic currently varies, ranging from 50 (exceptionally for miners in uranium mines) to 59 (with early retirement 3 years earlier). It is clear, however, that the prevailing mood among trade unionists and workers is one of scepticism about the future.
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned unemployment statistics from Most also indicate a deterioration in the employment and job creation situation in recent months. It will take some time for the Operational Programme projects to have the desired social and economic impact. But people need jobs now.
A hydrogen future?
The Ústí nad Labem region has a total of 11 strategic projects within the framework of the Operational Programme “Just Transition”, which should receive subsidies. At present (April 2025), a total of 7 projects (including the Green Mine project) are being implemented or prepared, and a total of 4 strategic projects are not being implemented or the applicant has withdrawn from them. A total of two projects that are currently not being implemented are strategic projects related to hydrogen energy. In particular, the H2 Triangle project, which was supposed to be a hydrogen economy project, and the project for the introduction of hydrogen mobility (public transport) in Ústí nad Labem failed. Problems with hydrogen also affected the Sev.en Green Mine project. The latter, as we have seen, envisaged the production of green hydrogen as one of the pillars of the energy dimension of the entire reclamation and resocialisation of the large quarry. The project envisaged the production of hydrogen from water by means of an electrolyser. This production is emission-free compared to hydrogen obtained from winter gas. At the end of 2024, information appeared in the media that Tykač’s company had withdrawn from the implementation of the hydrogen energy part of the Green Mine project. “Despite years of efforts to secure sales of green hydrogen and negotiations with several relevant customers, the company did not find a way to cover the cost of producing the raw material with sufficient cash flow from the project,” said Petr Farkač from Sev.en Group. In other words, Sev.en Group did not want to take any risks in this case and apparently could not offer an appropriate price on the current market.
Time has stopped in the city of Most somehow in the 1980′. Could the just transition make the region ‘go ahead’ again?
This also changed the financial aspect of the Green Mine project: the new public subsidy from the Green Transformation Programme was recalculated at CZK 530 313 181.48. The green hydrogen was to be used in chemical plants, as a storage medium for electricity generation or to power hydrogen buses in nearby Most. Thus, it seems that the Hydrogen Energy Laboratory of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in the Ústí nad Labem Region will be the main focus of the development of hydrogen energy in the Ústí nad Labem Region under the Operational Programme Just Transformation for the time being. In general, the Czech Republic is counting on hydrogen as a future energy source, but it is lagging behind in its practical use and production, both in European comparison and, of course, in comparison with China, which is the leader in the use of hydrogen energy. One of the main problems is the lack of renewable energy sources. And, apparently, the cost of production. In the future, this could mean that the Czech Republic will be dependent on hydrogen imports from northern or southern Europe via a network of pipelines adapted for this purpose.
I also contacted Sev.en to ask how the withdrawal from hydrogen production in the Green Mine project will affect the supply of jobs that Green Mine originally counted on. According to Vladimír Zemánek of the Sev.en Group, “the hydrogen project only contributes job units (to the planned jobs). This is due to the nature of the electrolyser technology, which is largely unmanned, and the jobs would be mainly focused on inspection, service and technical maintenance”. I asked the town of Most, through a spokeswoman, to comment on how and if the withdrawal from hydrogen production would affect its public transport system, which wants to rely on this source of clean energy. No reply had been received by the time this article went to press. However, according to Zemánek, Sev.en has not abandoned the hydrogen part of the project. It will “continue to be actively developed outside the OPJT, specifically on the site of the former Centrum underground mine. We are in the process of preparing the project documentation for building permits and related engineering, while at the same time we are looking for suitable alternative subsidies for its financing,” says Zemánek.
The current problems with the implementation of green hydrogen projects are not unique to the Czech Republic. Regarding the prospects of the hydrogen economy for the Ústí nad Labem region, I contacted expert Karel Tichý from the Economic and Social Council of the Ústí nad Labem region, who has been working on the hydrogen economy for a long time. “Hydrogen can play a very important role because it is not a new industry, it is traditionally produced in chemical plants… The Ústí nad Labem Region is the dominant producer of all available hydrogen in the Czech Republic,” he emphasised in the interview. However, as Tichý also added, it is currently grey hydrogen, which is an intermediate product of non-decarbonised chemical production and therefore not emission-free. Nevertheless, there is experience, potential and some vision in the region, which Tichý believes should help to develop the industry. However, he also sees a problem on the side of potential buyers. My question was therefore also directed at the strategic Green Mine project, which initially promised to develop the hydrogen economy, but has since abandoned this option. According to Tichý, Sev.en also found that its plans could not be implemented because it could not secure customers. Initially, the purchase of green hydrogen was to have been negotiated with the chemical company Orlen Unipetrol, but the company was unwilling to sign a contract for the purchase of hydrogen for ten or fifteen years at a contractually agreed price. It should be added that the price of hydrogen, i.e. its profitability in the current conditions, seems to be the biggest problem and the main core of the problem of the transition to green hydrogen sources in the Ústí nad Labem Region, including the other two hydrogen projects that failed at the end of 2024, i.e. will not be implemented after all. This is an important detail, because the economic factor is still paramount, regardless of environmental considerations. This is all the more true as the Czech economy and households have experienced some of the highest energy prices in the European Union in recent years, which has not been without economic and social damage. However, despite the current difficulties and a certain general, Europe-wide sobriety about hydrogen, Karel Tichý believes that hydrogen will play an important role in a transformed regional economy in the future.
Change as a concern, change as an opportunity The regions of Most, Most and Ústí went through great historical changes during the 20th century and are still experiencing them today. As a result of the post-socialist transformation of the 1990s, the region and the city have changed and had to cope with changes that were quite significant and certainly not only positive for the formerly relatively well-trodden industrial and mining centre of the socialist era. The decline of coal mining is not new to Most and the Ústí nad Labem Region, although it has accelerated in recent years thanks to the policies of the European Union. Unfortunately, the transition of the 1990s was much more negative for the region than for much of the Czech Republic, and the region is still struggling with the effects of these changes.
The current phase of transformation, driven by EU climate targets, is therefore just another layer of significant change and intractable or unaddressed problems that the region is currently facing.
It is precisely the fact that the current decline of coal mining, the transition to other energy sources and the just transition are set in a context that is the result of more or less negative (and certainly positive) changes over the last three decades that is important for understanding the current context of the ‘just transition’. It also explains the strong scepticism of some people who perceive the last decades as a time of growing social and economic problems, uncertainty and unresolved or poorly addressed issues. Unfortunately, for many people, the word ‘fairness’ is not part of the vocabulary used to describe past and present changes.
Of course, there is another side to every story. Experts are much more optimistic, stressing that the current change, like all change, is a great opportunity. It is an opportunity that the Ústí nad Labem region really needs, given the range of problems it faces. These include the dependence on cheap labour in industry or fossil energy and the general policy that has distorted the entire Czech economy for years, a high level of social exclusion, much less economic activity at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises, a lower rate of new job creation and a high rate of emigration, especially of young people with high professional qualifications who were born in the region but did not settle there.
For Ústí nad Labem and the Most region, the Operational Programme for a Just Transition is a chance to change things for the better. At least, that is how most of the experts I had the opportunity to talk to see it. Certain visions of where the region should go are currently being defined at the European, national and regional levels. But there is much more scepticism among miners and ordinary people. “There will be no just transition,” I heard from locals in informal conversations. A union leader from Sev.en, like many people in the energy sector, expressed his fears for the future. Change is always worrying.
It cannot be ignored that there are some question marks around the current coal phaseout and the new ‘just transition’. These include some moral considerations: is it right, for example, that public resources in the form of public subsidies should go to a company that, in the words of its owner, defines itself as foreign and, above all, continues to rely heavily on fossil resources and their extraction outside Europe? The flip side of the coin, however, is undoubtedly the fact that companies such as Sev.en are real players in the transition and remain major employers in the region. As such, they have an impact on public interest and local development.
Another issue is the speed of change and the speed of the fair transformation itself, which, like everything else, is subject to a rather complex bureaucracy that is usually rigid and can be very slow to adapt to the changes taking place. Meanwhile, structural change in the economy is a longer-term issue that requires a degree of strategic thinking. In contrast, mine and quarry closures and job losses happen too quickly for the people and places affected here and now. There is also the question of distinguishing between processes that lead to structural change and improvement, and those that essentially reproduce established patterns, usually couched in good-sounding words that appeal to the ears of ministers and Brussels officials. In the case of strategic projects in the Ústí nad Labem region, some unfortunately represent or have represented a continuation of the well-known and old mining paradigm or the economy of cheapness (competitiveness based on cheap labour with less added value production). But neither is the way to fair and sustainable change.
The future is never about resources. It depends on people (and, let us add, politicians and their good or bad decisions) and on how well resources can be used to bring about quality and intelligent change. There seems to be a consensus at all levels about what the county needs and that the resources of the Just Transition Operational Programme are an opportunity for positive change. The question for the future is whether these efforts can really be translated into a new and better reality that is not just more disappointment for local people and that is truly perceived as just.
All photos, except for the Green Mine image, were taken by the report’s author.
This report has been prepared with the support of Journalismfund, within the scope of a broader project concerning just transition in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Czechia.
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