Toshiba follows GE and Samsung C&T in Quitting Coal

Toshiba Corp. announced that it will stop taking orders for new coal-fired power plants and plans on reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.

However, the Japanese firm will still complete on-going work on around 10 more coal facilities in countries including India and Indonesia. This includes manufacturing steam turbines and offering maintenance services to the existing coal-power plants.

The engineering-to-technology giant will follow other companies such as Samsung C&T and General Electric in quitting coal. While Samsung C&T also continues to complete its existing projects before finally quitting coal, General Electric will opt out of its existing arrangements in September.

Nobuaki Kurumatani, Toshiba's President, also says that “we started considering withdrawing from new coal-plant construction in the previous fiscal year, and finally made the decision.” Toshiba's decision came when last month the Japanese government pledged to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2050.

While Toshiba plans to quit coal, this environment-friendly move has important lessons for policymakers in Asia's energy sector, where investor demands and tighter government policy on climate change has the potential to persuade big firms to limit their reliance on coal.