(MENAFN- AzerNews) By News Centre
Energy and climate ministers from the G7 group of industrialisednations have agreed to phase out by 2035 the use of coal powerwhere the emissions have not been captured, a UK minister said,giving the group a timeline for meeting the deal struck at lastyear's UN climate summit in Dubai.
The COP28 summit ended with a pledge to transition away fromfossil fuels, and accelerate efforts towards the phase-down ofso-called unabated coal power.
Andrew Bowie, the UK minister for nuclear and renewables,described the agreement reached at this week's G7 ministers meetingin Turin as“historic” in an interview with CNBC on Monday.“We dohave an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the2030s,” he said.
Sources said the final agreement, however, could include leewayin the planned timeline to include the option of a date“consistentwith keeping a limit of 1.5C temperature rise [above pre-industriallevels] within reach, in line with countries' net zero pathways”.This would help countries heavily reliant on coal, such asJapan.
An Italian diplomatic source confirmed that the outlines of adeal had been agreed and said more details would be formallyannounced by ministers after the final day of meetings onTuesday.
A move away from coal would“help accelerate the shift ofinvestment from coal to clean technology in particular in Japan andmore broadly in the whole Asian coal economy, including China andIndia,” said Luca Bergamaschi, co-founder of Italian climate changethink-tank EccoClimate.
Under new rules unveiled by the US last week, coal plantsplanning to stay open beyond 2039 will have to cut or capture 90per cent of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032.
The global capacity of coal-fired power stations grew by 2 percent last year driven mainly by new plants in energy-hungry China,while there was a slowing in the pace of closures of plants in theEU countries and the US.
Climate activists said the phaseout deal did not go fast or farenough to address the global warming effect of fossil fuelconsumption. All the G7 industrialised nations apart from Japan hadalready committed to phasing out coal power domestically, theynoted.
Countries that wished to demonstrate the ambition needed tolimit warming to not more than 1.5C, a key threshold in the 2015Paris climate agreement, should take a tougher stance, said JaneEllis, head of climate policy at the Berlin-based ClimateAnalytics.
The non-governmental organisation had called for the G7 to setan earlier 2030 phaseout date for power generation by coal, and a2035 deadline for gas-fired supplies.
G7 members were responsible for more than a fifth of globalemissions in 2021, it said, but none were on track to meet their2030 emission reduction targets.
The chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, those nationsthat are vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate extremescaused by global warming, urged rich countries to make boldemission cuts to avoid the worst of its affects.
“Urgently and drastically increasing your ambition is the onlyway we can safeguard a liveable world for all,” said AmbassadorFatumanava Dr. Pa'olelei Luteru, who serves as a permanentrepresentative from Samoa to the UN.
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