In a major move away from fossil fuels, the energy ministers of the affluent Group of Seven (G7) countries agreed to close their coal-fired power facilities by 2035 at the latest.

According to a video uploaded on X, Britain’s minister for Energy Security and Net Zero Andrew Bowie stated, “We have an agreement to stop using coal in the first half of 2030’s… it is a historical agreement.”

According to diplomatic sources in Italy, a technical agreement has been made.

Following a two-day conference in Turin, the G7 energy ministers will announce their final communiqué on Tuesday, which will contain the deal.

Before the ministerial meeting began, a source previously told Reuters that officials from the G7 countries—Italy, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and Japan—discussed the matter until late on Sunday.

The deal represents a major step towards the transition away from fossil fuels, of which coal is the most polluting, as suggested by the United Nations climate summit at COP28 last year.

According to Luca Bergamaschi, a co-founder of the Italian climate change think tank ECCO, “it helps accelerate the shift of investments from coal to clean technology in particular in Japan and more broadly in the whole Asian coal economy, including China and India,” on X.

Italy’s six surviving coal-fired power plants generated 4.7% of the country’s total electricity production in 2018. With the exception of the island of Sardinia, where the deadline is 2028, Rome presently intends to stop growing plants by 2025.

Coal has a larger importance in Germany and Japan, where it accounted for more than 25% of all power produced last year.

The G7 promised to prioritise taking practical actions to phase out coal power generation last year while Japan was the president of the group; however, they did not specify a precise date.

(Adapted from ThePrint.in)

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