The end of coal is near. At least for some twenty states, Italy included, that have responded to the Anglo-Canadian call to close the door on the fossil fuel by 2030. The countries that burn the most of it are absent.
A month ago, Canada and the United Kingdom announced their intention to phase out coal from national electricity generation sources. Today, the pair has grown into an alliance of at least fifteen countries that have decided to corner the most polluting fossil fuel in existence in the energy sector by 2030. The announcement of this new coalition was made on 16 November during the United Nations climate conference (Cop 23) in Bonn, Germany.
The alliance is called the Powering past coal alliance and includes, alongside the United Kingdom and Canada, Italy as well. Italy recently unveiled its new national energy strategy, which brings forward the phase-out of coal to 2025, with a definitive cut in CO2 emissions set for 2050. Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti, present in Bonn, also confirmed Italy's intention to put itself forward — probably through the city of Milan — to host the 2020 climate conference, Cop 26.
The other countries that have joined are Angola, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Chile, Mexico, the Fiji Islands (the presidency of Cop 23), the Marshall Islands and the Netherlands — which as early as 2016 adopted one of the most ambitious climate policies in Europe, voting for a 55 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2030, precisely through the closure of all coal-fired plants in the country. The goal is to reach 50 members by Cop 24 in Katowice, one of the most polluted cities in Poland and in Europe as a whole.
"The science is clear: there is no place for coal in a world where it is necessary to keep the rise in temperatures within 1.5 degrees. Our societies and our economies must be powered by clean, renewable energy sources. We welcome the first steps that countries and regions have taken today to turn this vision into reality through the alliance, but it is only the beginning," said Manuel Pulgar Vidal, leader of the Wwf's climate and energy programme, which has been campaigning for years to ban coal by 2025. Pulgar Vidal, who prior to his role at the Wwf served as Peru's Environment Minister and presided over Cop 20 held in Lima, went on to add that "ending coal is essential, it is the first step towards powering a sustainable future for all" and meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.
And, unfortunately, this phrase is self-evident only in form, because Germany and Poland — the country currently hosting the climate conference and the one that will host it in 2018 — together account for half of Europe's entire coal consumption, which is precisely why they have not joined the Powering past coal alliance.
Just 60 kilometres from Bonn lies one of Germany's largest coal mines, Garzweiler, which extracts lignite non-stop across an area — at peak production — of 48 square kilometres, equivalent to the size of the city of Bolzano. And barring an early closure, it is expected to remain operational until 2045, when the budget of lignite to be extracted (amounting to 1.3 billion tonnes) will have been exhausted.
On the one hand, learning and discovering that, after all these years, in the heart of a Europe that presents itself as a world leader in the fight against global warming, coal mines on an industrial scale still exist may seem literally inconceivable and frustrating; on the other, it gives cause for hope that, when the right moment comes and enlightened people assume power, the solution is right there — written down, known to all and within reach.
