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G7 countries agree to shut all their coal power plants within the next 10 years
(theprogressplaybook.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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That's the beauty of announcing this now: France can start exporting to other countries outside the G7 and offer cheap coal. Then France (or whichever G7 country) can wind down the coal production in line with the country's domestic usage.
Now it isn't lying when you say that coal production is down (happy enviros) and the country is doing it's part to lower emissions (happy constituents). The numbers also show that hydrocarbon sales are up in foreign countries that have become addicted to cheap fuel (happy corps).
As long as you don't look at the numbers going into this, it's going to be a bundle of good news in 10 years. No actual change to the climate and global emissions but it looks good on paper!
I can't speak for France but here in the United States the use of coal has absolutely fallen off a cliff since 2008. It's down by nearly 60% since then and overall coal use is about what it was in 1965.
Edit: Coal production is also down by about the same amount. So maybe France is playing the "raise it before lowering it" game but that's not happening in all of the G7 nations.
France had 0.9TWh of coal electricity production last year. That is 0.5% of electricity generation.