Baku: Twenty-five countries pledged at the COP29 climate summit on Wednesday not to build any new, unreduced coal-fired power plants in a push to accelerate the phase-out of the highly polluting fossil fuel.
Britain, Canada, France, Germany and major coal producer Australia are among the major wealthy developed economies to sign voluntary commitments in Azerbaijan.
It commits countries to submit national climate plans early next year showing that there will be no new unabated coal in their energy systems.
Unabated refers to burning coal without any measures to reduce emissions, such as carbon capture and storage, technologies that have been criticized as unproven at scale.
The pledge does not force countries to stop mining or exporting coal, which produces more global heating carbon emissions than oil and gas and is a major driver of coal mining. climate change.
Many of the world’s largest coal-fired power generators – including China, India and the United States – did not sign the “call to action” launched in Baku.
EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra, who signed the initiative, said coal power was still growing despite historic commitments at last year’s Conference of the Parties to reduce the use of fossil fuels as energy.
“The commitment to ‘break away from fossil fuels’ needs to be translated into real action,” Hoekstra said.
The UK recently became the first industrial nation in the Group of Seven to end its reliance on coal for electricity generation.
British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said coal “poses one of the biggest threats” to controlling global warming to levels that scientists believe can prevent the worst consequences of climate change.
He added that the commitment “sends a clear signal to countries around the world that the use of new coal needs to be stopped before the next COP summit in Brazil”.
The inclusion of Australia, a major coal consumer and exporter, was welcomed by COP29 campaigners, where raising funds for poorer countries has been a higher priority than efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“This has closed the door on coal. Now we need to lock it,” Erin Ryan of the Australian Climate Action Network told AFP in Baku.
“We’ve left it in the past, both in our energy system and in our export markets.”
Developing countries such as Angola, Uganda and Ethiopia are among the countries that have signed the pledge, which was developed in partnership with the Past Coal Powered Alliance.
