The alliance including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands commits to phasing out coal, sharing technology to reduce emissions, and encouraging the rest of the world to cut usage.
The alliance, which is not legally binding, aims to have at least 50 members by the next U.N. climate summit in 2018. But some of the world's biggest coal users, such as China, India, the United States, Germany and Russia, have not joined. Coal is responsible for more than 40 per cent of global emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
