UK-led Anti-Coal Alliance Signs Up 58

The UK government has published a list of 26 sovereign countries, plus eight US/Canadian states or cities, plus 24 businesses that have signed up to its 'Powering Past Coal' alliance.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance was founded by the UK and Canada and launched last month at the COP23 climate action meeting in Bonn, Germany - but has failed to sign up that host nation.

The businesses include European utilities EDF, Engie and Iberdrola; and Denmark's Orsted (formerly Dong) which recently divested its upstream business and has committed to shut coal-fired plants by 2023. Signatories declare that "to meet the Paris Agreement, analysis shows that coal phase-out is needed no later than by 2030 in the OECD and EU28, and no later than by 2050 in the rest of the world."

The alliance says that "government partners commit to phasing out existing traditional coal power in their jurisdictions, and to a moratorium on any new traditional coal power stations without operational carbon capture and storage within their jurisdictions; business and other non-government partners can commit to powering their operations without coal." It adds that "all partners commit to supporting clean power through their policies (whether public or corporate, as appropriate) and investments, and to restricting financing for traditional coal power without carbon capture and storage."

The full list of signatories is published here, and includes the UK and France (but not Germany), Netherlands and Canada, the states of Alberta, British Columbia, California and Quebec, as well as several island nations threatened by rising waters caused by climate warming such as the Marshall Islands, Niue and Vanuatu. 

Next week the International Energy Agency publishes its annual report, Coal 2017, which is likely to show that gas is finally making inroads into the coal market's share of power generation - but possibly not as rapidly as climate action advocates might like.