By when will we be able to phase out coal-fired power generation? The leading western industrial nations have now jointly named a date.
According to one participant, the climate, energy and environment ministers of the leading western industrial nations (G7) agreed at their meeting in Italy to phase out coal by 2035. “Yes, we have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the 2030s,” British Energy Secretary Andrew Bowie told the Class CNBC portal on the sidelines of the G7 ministerial meeting at the Venaria Reale Palace on the outskirts of Turin. “This is a historic agreement that we were unable to achieve at COP 28 in Dubai last year,” he added.
The G7 ministers want to make a final declaration on Tuesday. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and Economics State Secretary Anja Hajduk traveled to Turin from Germany. Italy holds the G7 presidency this year. “To have the G7 nations together at the table and send a signal to the world that the world’s advanced economies are committed to phasing out coal in the early 2030s is truly incredible,” Bowie said.
Germany had fixed the coal phase-out in 2020 by law at 2038. However, the traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, FDP and Greens stated in the coalition agreement at the end of 2021 that it would “ideally” be brought forward to 2030. The coal mining area in North Rhine-Westphalia has already been phased out by 2030. In the structurally weak east, where lignite is mined and converted into electricity in Saxony, Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, there are strong reservations about phasing out coal before 2038. According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, Germany, like Great Britain and France, is a member of the “Powering Past Coal Alliance” – a coal phase-out alliance – which advocates for an early global phase-out of coal.
Source: Stern
