Far away from the shiny Aegean islands and the tourist-packed Mediterranean coast, the north-west inland of Greece offers a radically different landscape. Stretching on 185 km² between the towns of Ptolemaida and Kozani, in Western Macedonia, one of the largest open-cast lignite mines in Europe is here constantly expanding since its opening in 1956 by the state-owned Public Power Corporation (PPC). With reserves for 1.8 billion tons of lignite, the mine represents today a major energy source for Greece, accounting for 30% of the country's production, though its future development remains uncertain in the context of the EU's 2030 coal phase-out plan.