The announcement comes from the country where coal made history: in the United Kingdom there will be a gradual phasing out of old and obsolete coal-fired power stations by 2025, in favour of gas and nuclear plants. The announcement comes just a few weeks before Cop21, from Amber Rudd, the UK's Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

"It cannot be acceptable for an advanced economy like the UK to be relying on polluting, high-carbon, 50-year-old coal-fired power stations. I want to be clear: that is not the future," the minister declared. "We need to build a new energy infrastructure, fit for the 21st century."

A half-victory, however, because according to the Guardian the country will place greater emphasis on gas and nuclear than on renewables. All of this comes, moreover, after the same government announced its intention to cut subsidies for small-scale solar installations by 90 per cent from 2016.

WWF nonetheless considers it "a very important decision" given that "coal is the most polluting fossil fuel, whose use produces the highest CO2 emissions and is a fuel that the European Union can rapidly do without." For this reason the organisation calls on Italy to follow this example, given that in our country coal-fired power stations produce "around 13.5 per cent of electricity, but weigh very heavily in terms of CO2 emissions (almost 40 per cent) and pollution. Today Italy has no need whatsoever for energy produced from coal, as it has an overabundance of electricity generation capacity."

Greenpeace on the other hand confirms that Enel, on the same day, presented "an update to its industrial plan which sees the Italian multinational strengthen its decarbonisation strategy" and "will see investment in renewables reach 53 per cent, while that in conventional generation will fall from 17 per cent."

Andrea Boraschi, head of the energy and climate campaign at Greenpeace Italia, states: "Countries with greater capacity to envision the industrial future, as well as the most innovative companies, are today making very clear choices: they are moving away from coal and betting on cleaner generation technologies. That it should be the United Kingdom doing this today — the country where coal marked the beginning of the industrial age — makes it all the more significant."