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Guterres calls for

comprehensive coal phase-out

P UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres this finally organise a fair transition, going coal plant
week called for a comprehensive coal phase- by coal plant if necessary.
out if the world is to meet its 1.5 degree goal for The UN chief’s remarks are particularly
global warming. urgent, as the UN Climate Change’s Initial NDC
He called for three Climate Action steps that Synthesis Report, which was published at the end
would be needed to provide a just transition for of February, showed that governments were not
the global economy and to help countries meet on track to meet the Paris Agreement goals.
their Paris Agreement goals for reducing green- The report warned that more ambitious
house gas (GHG) emissions. national climate action plans were needed in
He said that the world needed to end its 2021 if countries are to achieve the Paris Agree-
“deadly addiction to coal” by cancelling all global ment goals.
coal projects in the pipeline. The report warned that current national cli-
In a message to the Powering Past Coal mate action plans, NDCs, would only reduce
Alliance Summit, he said that national govern- emissions by 1% by 2030 compared to 2010 lev-
ments, private companies and local authorities els, compared to the 45% identified by the Inter-
all needed to take the three steps as they formu- governmental Panel on Climate Change.
lating future regulatory regimes and investment Moving away from coal should become
strategies. more and more cost-effective. The International
“Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is Energy Agency (IEA) has found that the cost
the single most important step to get in line with of building new solar utility-scale projects is
[the] 1.5-degree goal,” he said. cheaper than simply running existing coal plants
The first step is to cancel all global coal pro- in places such as China and India, with renewa-
jects in the pipeline and end the deadly addiction ble energy getting cheaper by the day.
to coal. He set a deadline of 2030 for OECD and “Coal’s economic viability is declining. This
2040 for non-OECD countries. has been accelerated by the pandemic. In virtu-
The second is to end international financing ally all markets, it is now cheaper to build new
of coal plants and to shift investment to renewa- renewable energy capacity than new coal plants,”
ble energy projects. Guterres said in his message.™
The third is to jump-start the global effort to

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