The G7 wants to "accelerate" its exit from fossil fuels, but no new date

Europe 1 with AFP 08:36, April 16, 2023

This new objective, announced in a joint communiqué at the end of a G7 ministerial meeting on climate that has been held since Saturday in Sapporo (northern Japan), does not concern fossil fuels with CO2 capture and storage devices. The G7 countries (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada) simply stress that this objective is part of their efforts to achieve energy carbon neutrality by 2050 "at the latest".

Last year, the G7 had already committed to decarbonizing its electricity sector by 2035, a goal reconfirmed on Sunday. In a sign of their difficult negotiations, the G7 failed to commit specifically to a date for phasing out coal for their electricity generation, while the United Kingdom, supported by the France, had proposed the deadline of 2030.

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A "breakthrough" before COP28

The decision to phase out all fossil fuels nevertheless marks a "strong step forward", reacted to AFP the French Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. "This is an important point of support to be able to extend this approach" to the G20 in India and the UN climate conference (COP28) in Dubai at the end of the year, she said, while admitting that these future global negotiations "will not be obvious".

The club of major industrialized countries had to show unity and voluntarism after the latest alarming synthesis report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in March. According to the IPCC, global warming caused by human activity will reach 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era from the years 2030-2035. This further jeopardizes the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit temperature rise to this level, or at least well below 2°C.

The G7 also reaffirmed on Sunday its commitment to work with other developed countries to raise $ 100 billion a year for emerging countries against global warming, a promise dating back to 2009 and initially to be kept as early as 2020. A summit to improve access to climate finance for developing countries, a sensitive and crucial point for a success of COP28, is scheduled for the end of June in Paris.

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Eliminating plastic pollution

Due to the very tense global geopolitical context with the war in Ukraine since last year, and Japan's conservative proposals that the G7 endorse upstream investments in gas, environmental NGOs feared that the Sapporo meeting would lead to a regression of climate commitments. In a similar tone to last year, the G7 acknowledged in its communiqué that investments in natural gas "may be appropriate" to help some countries avoid possible war-related energy shortages in Ukraine.

But at the same time, the G7 stressed the primacy of a "clean" energy transition and the need to reduce gas demand. Japan's other proposal to have ammonia and hydrogen recognized as "clean" co-fuels for thermal power plants was also surrounded by safeguards. These technologies must be developed from "low-carbon and renewable" sources, the G7 insisted.

On the environmental front, the group's countries have committed to reducing their plastic pollution to zero by 2040, thanks in particular to the circular economy, the reduction or abandonment of disposable and non-recyclable plastics. This is an "ambitious" goal, German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said at a press conference.