Hope Italy can be coal free by 2024 - Pichetto

(see related) (ANSA) - ROME, JUN 5 - Environment and Energy Security Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said Monday that he hopes Italy can be coal free by the end of next year as the country moves forward on the path towards dumping the fossil fuels that are the driving force of the climate crisis.
    "Today we have coal, oil and gas (for our energy needs)," Pichetto Fratin said at the Green and Blue Festival on World Environment Day.
    "The aim is to be able to abandon coal by 2025, or even earlier.
    I hope by the end of 2024 if gas prices remain stable.
    "Then it will the oil's turn and then gas, which has to be vector to accompany us towards the end of fossil fuels, with renewables growing with hydro-electric, geothermal, solar and wind, where we have to focus on off-shore in a big way". The minister added that he does not think Italy will be able to meet all of its energy needs with renewables, saying it will probably be necessary to have nuclear power in the energy mix too.
    Italy closed its nuclear plants in 1990 after the 1987 referendum on atomic energy following the Chernobyl disaster.
    But there have been calls for a rethink of the ban, given that nuclear energy has a low carbon footprint and there is a need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat the climate crisis, and the nation is looking to boost its energy security following the war in Ukraine. (ANSA).