“Historic agreement”
G7 countries want to phase out coal by 2035
April 29, 2024, 10:08 p.m
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At a meeting in Turin, the environment ministers of the G7 countries apparently agreed on a time frame for phasing out coal. This should take place in the “first half of the 2030s,” explains a British State Secretary.
According to British Secretary of State for Nuclear Power and Renewable Energy Andrew Bowie, the environment, climate protection and energy ministers of the G7 countries have agreed to phase out coal in the “first half of the 2030s”. It is a “historic agreement,” Bowie told the US television station CNBC on the sidelines of the G7 ministers’ meeting in Turin, northern Italy.
European delegation circles were also expecting a commitment from the G7 states to shut down coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s. Accordingly, a draft resolution envisages “existing coal-fired power generation without carbon capture in our energy systems in the first half of the 2030s or within a time frame consistent with limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in line with the net “to phase out the countries’ zero paths”. Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke is taking part in the G7 ministerial meeting for Germany.
Observers consider a binding phase-out date for coal-fired power generation to be an important step for global climate protection. Among the G7 countries, France is in favor of an exit as early as 2030 – while Japan, for example, which covers a third of its electricity needs from coal power, rejects a fixed exit date. In Germany, the current legal situation envisages an exit by 2038.
UN Climate Secretary Simon Stiell once again called on the G7 countries to use their political and economic weight and their technological capabilities to phase out fossil fuels. He often hears in forums such as the G7 energy ministers’ meeting that the industrialized countries cannot move forward too quickly in order not to anticipate the results of negotiations at the UN level, he said. However, it is “complete nonsense to claim that the G7 cannot – or should not – show the way to more ambitious climate protection measures.”
The G7 countries account for 38 percent of global economic output and, according to figures from 2021, are responsible for 21 percent of global CO2 emissions. The G7 group of important industrialized countries includes the USA, Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain, Canada and Japan. Italy currently holds the presidency.