Austria shuts down last coal-fired power plant

Austria has shut down its last coal-fired power plant as part of a plan to end the use of fossil fuels for energy production by 2030. Utility company Verbund said the plant in the southeastern town of Mellach was powered down Friday.

The Mellach plant had provided heat and electricity to the nearby city of Graz for 34 years. Austria, an Alpine nation with no significant fossil fuel reserves of its own, still has more than a dozen power plants burning gas and oil.

The government aims to shut the gas-fired plants by the end of the decade, after which the country will generate all of its energy from renewable sources. Austria is the eighth European Union country to end the burning of coal, which is considered the most heavily polluting fossil fuel and a major source of man-made greenhouse gas emissions stoking climate change.