Ministers from the Group of Seven nations have agreed to shut down all their coal plants by 2035 at the latest, according to a UK minister, in a climate policy breakthrough that could influence other countries to do the same.

Putting an end date on coal — the most climate-polluting fossil fuel — has been highly controversial at international climate talks. Japan, which derived 32% of its electricity from coal in 2023, according to the climate think tank Ember, has blocked progress on the issue at past G7 meetings, CNN has previously reported.

“We do have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the 2030s,” Andrew Bowie, a UK minister at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, told Class CNBC in Turing, Italy. “This is, by the way a historic agreement, something that we weren’t able to achieve at COP28 in Dubai last year.”

“So, to have the G7 nations come around the table to send that signal to the world — that we, the advanced economies of the world are committed to phasing out coal by the early 2030s — is quite incredible.”

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