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Government to phase out the most polluting fossil and replace it with cleaner sources, such as gas, to meet climate commitments

The last coal power station in Britain will be forced to close in 2025, the government said as it laid out its plan to phase-out the polluting fossil fuel.

Ministers promised last year that the UK would close coal power within a decade and replace it with gas and other sources to meet its climate change commitments.

‘Equivalent of a Hazelwood a year’ will need to close by early 2030s to meet Paris targets, witnesses tell Senate inquiry

Coal-fired power stations in Australia will need to shut at the rate of about one a year between now and the mid-2030s for the country to meet the commitments made in Paris, a Senate hearing has been told.

Witnesses also told the hearing that since Australia’s coal-fired power stations are now very old – mostly built in the 1970s and 80s – they would be shutting in the coming decades regardless of climate policy, further highlighting the need for a transition plan.

Related: Hazelwood's closure was inevitable. So where was the transition plan? | Gay Alcorn

Related: Direct Action paying polluters to avoid clearing land they would never have cleared – report

On Sunday, the capital city of one of the world’s fastest growing economies was effectively shut down in an emergency act. The reason was not terrorism, but air pollution. The threat to citizens from smog in Delhi was judged so great that traffic was ratioined, coal-fired power stations closed and diesel generators suspended. This was a brave and sane decision in the world’s largest democracy.

Right now Delhi is the world’s most polluted city. But air quality is at crisis levels in cities around the world. More than 300 million children live at the severest risk, Unicef declared last week, and 2 billion in areas where outdoor pollution exceeds health guidelines. Half of Delhi’s schoolchildren have permanently impaired lung capacity, thanks to the air they breathe.

The world will never again build cities as rapidly as it does this century. If we are serious about limiting global warming, tackling air pollution and promoting innovative, resource-efficient growth, there is a narrow window of opportunity

Almost as staggering as the current enormous influx into cities across the globe is the dramatic slowdown in urbanisation that will follow it. The world is literally going to town on urbanisation – but it is a project that is both immense and historically fleeting.

In less than 100 years, the world’s urban population is expected to double to 8 or 9 billion – accounting for the bulk of a projected global population of around 11 billion. Yet in all the centuries that follow this one, cities may add, at most, another billion to their ranks. So if this century is the most urbanising in history, it will also mark the end of humankind’s “great urbanisation” era.

Humans work best in cities … but urbanisation also creates pollution, congestion, poor health, crime and waste

Corruption stifles incentives to work and innovate … and risks rendering cities dysfunctional

Related: Climate change and cities: a prime source of problems, yet key to a solution