G7 countries commit to closing their coal-fired power plants by 2035

Meeting in Italy on Tuesday, the seven powers for the first time collectively announced an end date for coal.

This is an important step towards ending reliance on fossil fuels. Meeting in Italy, the G7 countries decided on Tuesday April 30 to close coal-fired power plants without carbon capture devices by 2035.

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and environmental activists have urged Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States to lead by example . The G7 therefore agreed to “gradually phase out current coal-fired electricity production in [ses] energy systems during the first half of the 2030s or in a timetable compatible with maintaining a temperature increase limit of 1.5°C, in accordance with carbon neutrality trajectories.

Some countries like France were campaigning for the G7 to abandon coal by 2030, but Japan in particular, where a third of its electricity comes from coal, was reluctant to set a deadline.

Also reduce global plastic production

THE seven great powers have also said “strive” to reduce the global production of plastic in order to tackle head-on the pollution caused by this material, present everywhere in the environment, from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the oceans, as well as in the blood of human beings. “We are committed to taking ambitious action across the entire lifecycle of plastics to end plastic pollution and call on the global community to do the same”they declared, without further details.

The Turin meeting was the first major political meeting on climate since COP28, organized last December in Dubai, where states committed to gradually giving up coal, gas and oil.