The world understands that we must all move away from coal sooner than later. While Trump and the Koch brothers are trying to put coal dinosaurs in charge of our environmental agencies, countries like China are building out their renewable energy infrastructure and closing down coal production. Major cities like Paris are expediting regulations on diesel vehicles in their city and the Wall Street Journal is doing its best impression of Das Reich trying to pretend there’s a meaningful economic upside in our current administration’s attempts to turn back the hands of time. When you produce coal, one of the big ways of making money on that coal is having places to sell that coal. The list of places where the coal industry will be able to sell their wares just narrowed once again by the measurement of a country—Italy.
On Tuesday, Italy’s economic development minister said the country will commit to phasing out coal in its energy mix, ending all use by 2025 according to Argus Media.
According to Arstechnica, this is no small promise compared with England, France and Canada’s similar pledges.
Italy's pledge falls somewhere in between these pledges. The country has a handful of coal-fired plants totaling 8GW of capacity, which account for 15 percent of its electricity generation, according to Argus. But the closure of those plants may have more impact on coal exporters than on Italy's economy. Enel, a major power producer in the country, has experience installing renewable energy plants around the world (including many renewable projects in the US). Assocarboni, the General Association of Coal Operators in Italy, notes that there’s only one coal mine in Italy. About 90 percent of Italy’s coal demand is met by imports shipped from overseas. Those exporting to Italy include Russia, Australia, the US, and South Africa.
Trump’s base must be having economic anxiety fatigue with all of this winning.