By when will we be able to phase out coal-fired power generation? The leading western industrial nations have now jointly named a date.
At their meeting in Italy, the climate, energy and environment ministers of the leading western industrial nations (G7) agreed to phase out coal by 2035. The German Federal Ministry of Economics confirmed this on Monday evening. A spokesman said that Germany had played a key role in pushing for such a decision to set a clear end date for coal-fired power generation in all G7 countries.
British Secretary of State for Energy Andrew Bowie had previously made the agreement public. “Yes, we have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the 2030s,” he told Class CNBC 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.
Protesters throw eggs, bottles and smoke objects
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.
On the sidelines of the meeting, anti-G7 protests broke out in Italy’s fourth largest city on Monday. According to the Ansa news agency, demonstrators tried to get to the participants’ quarters, the police initially held them back with shields and then used tear gas, water cannons and clubs. Eggs, bottles and smokers were thrown at law enforcement officers from among the demonstrators.
Germany is part of a coal phase-out alliance
In 2020, Germany stipulated the coal phase-out by law until 2038. However, the traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, FDP and Greens agreed in the coalition agreement at the end of 2021 to “ideally” bring it forward to 2030.
The coal mining area in North Rhine-Westphalia has already been phased out by 2030. In the east, where brown coal is mined and converted into electricity in Saxony, Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, there are strong reservations about phasing out 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 is committed to an early global coal phase-out.
The Group of Seven (G7) is an informal forum of the heads of state and government of seven large industrialized countries. These include Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Canada and the USA. The European Union is also represented at the meetings.
