Brussels: Eight of the EU's 28 countries have pledged to phase out coal for electricity production by 2030 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, officials said Tuesday.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, received the pledges as contributions to the bloc's efforts to deliver on the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
"More and more member states are making the political commitment to phase out coal in the next decade," EU climate and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said. Canete said that among the European Union countries introducing or confirming such timelines, France intends to phase out coal by 2022 -- before Italy and Ireland by 2025. Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Finland aim to do so by 2030, the Spanish commissioner told a press conference in Brussels.
