\n<\/p>\n
The Australian government has been urged to prepare for a shift away from thermal coal exports and accelerate green industries after one of its main international customers signed up to close all coal-fired power plants by 2040.<\/p>\n
South Korea, Australia\u2019s third-biggest market for coal burned to generate electricity, announced at the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil that it was joining the \u201cPowering Past Coal Alliance\u201d, a group of about 60 nations and 120 sub-national governments, businesses and organisations committed to phasing out the fossil fuel.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s minister of climate, energy and environment, Kim Sung-hwan, said it demonstrated the country\u2019s commitment to \u201caccelerating a just and clean energy transition\u201d.<\/p>\n
The north Asian country has the world\u2019s seventh-largest coal power fleet and is the world\u2019s fourth-largest thermal coal importer behind China, India and Japan, responsible for about 8% of global trade. Coal provides about 30% of its electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shift from coal to clean power is not only essential for the climate. It will also help both the Republic of Korea and all other countries increase our energy security, boost the competitiveness of our businesses, and create thousands of jobs,\u201d Kim said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The pledge commits Korea to retiring 62 coal plants, 40 of which already have confirmed closure dates. The analytics firm Kpler estimates Australia will sell about A$2.3bn (US$1.5bn) worth of thermal coal to South Korea this year.<\/p>\n
James Bowen, the director of consultancy ReMap Research, said South Korea\u2019s decision would send a powerful signal across the Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Australia to continue to rely on fossil fuel exports in the medium to long term is a risky strategy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/p>\n
He cited Australian Treasury modelling that suggested the country\u2019s fossil fuel exports would fall in value by about 50% over the next five years regardless of where the country set its national emissions reduction target. Total thermal coal sales from Australian mines last financial year were $32bn.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Korea\u2019s decision should prompt Australia to show leadership by discussing timeframes for its own fossil fuel phaseout while helping its regional neighbours to embrace clean energy,\u201d Bowen said.<\/p>\n
Tim Buckley, the director of Climate Energy Finance, said the Korean announcement was \u201cbrilliant\u201d news and showed Australia\u2019s trading partners were \u201cresponding to climate science and their treaty obligations\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia needs to pivot our export focus to low-emissions industries of the future, in particular exporting green iron and aluminium, critical minerals and lithium hydroxide to help our key trade partners jointly deliver on their decarbonisation objectives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Australia is not a member of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, though the government has a target of increasing the proportion of electricity from renewable energy from about 42% over the past year to 82% by 2030.<\/p>\n The Australia political debate in recent days has been focused on the federal opposition dropping support for a bipartisan target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and indicating it would subsidise coal power if it won the next election, due in 2028.<\/p>\n South Korea has faced criticism for dropping a 100% renewable energy target and not acting faster to address the climate crisis. The Climate Action Tracker found it should phase out coal power by 2030 and gas power shortly after if its action were to be compatible with the goals of the Paris agreement.<\/p>\n It is also a significant importer of metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking. It has substantial nuclear and gas-power fleets, each supplying roughly 30% of its electricity.<\/p>\n Australia is the world\u2019s second-biggest thermal coal exporter behind Indonesia and easily the biggest exporter of metallurgical coal. It rivals the US and Qatar to be the world\u2019s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, another fossil fuel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Australian government has been urged to prepare for a shift away from thermal coal exports and accelerate green industries after one of its main international customers signed up to close all coal-fired power plants by 2040. South Korea, Australia\u2019s third-biggest market for coal burned to generate electricity, announced at the Cop30 climate conference in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[4222,2059,1083,2154,15169,83,8158,685,6386,1664,4221,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-34215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-alarm","9":"tag-australian","10":"tag-close","11":"tag-coal","12":"tag-coalfired","13":"tag-decision","14":"tag-exports","15":"tag-korean","16":"tag-plants","17":"tag-power","18":"tag-sounds","19":"tag-south"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}