Energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries, the world’s most developed democracies, reached an agreement on Monday to shut down their countries’ coal-fired power plants by 2035 at the latest, in a significant step towards transitioning away from fossil fuels. to other forms of energy, reports Reuters.
“We have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of 2030 … it’s a historic agreement,” British Energy Security and Net Zero Minister Andrew Bowie said in a video posted on X.
Italian diplomatic sources said the meeting concluded a technical agreement.
The agreement will be included in the final communiqué of the G7 energy ministers, which will be published on Tuesday at the end of a two-day meeting in Turin.
A source previously told Reuters that diplomats from the G7 countries – Italy, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan – discussed the issue until Sunday evening, before the start of the ministerial meeting.
The agreement marks a significant step in the direction indicated last year by the COP28 United Nations climate summit for a transition away from fossil fuels, of which coal is the most polluting.
“It helps accelerate the shift of investment from coal to clean technology, particularly in Japan and more broadly throughout the Asian coal economy, including China and India,” said Luca Bergamaschi, a co-founding member of the Italian research institute ECCO, on X.
Last year, Italy produced 4.7% of the total electricity through the remaining six coal-fired plants. Rome currently plans to shut down its coal plants by 2025, except for the island of Sardinia, where the deadline is 2028.
In Germany and Japan, coal has a greater role, the share of electricity produced with this fuel in 2023 being over 25% of the total.
Last year, under Japan’s presidency, the G7 pledged to prioritize concrete steps toward phasing out coal-based power generation, without specifying a specific deadline.
Publisher: AC
