Saturday, May 28, 2022

G7 nations vow to stop fossil-fuel financing abroad by end of year
AFP Published May 28, 2022 -
Representatives of member countries attend a news conference during the meeting of the G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers during the German G7 Presidency at the EUREF-Campus in Berlin, Germany on May 27, 2022. — Reuters

BERLIN: Japan for the first time has joined fellow members of the Group of Seven industrialised nations in pledging to end public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of the year to help combat global warming.

“We commit to end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022,” G7 energy and climate ministers said in a joint statement following talks in Berlin on Friday.

The term “unabated” refers to projects that do not employ techniques to offset some of the pollution caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

Ending subsidies for the international fossil fuel energy sector was already part of a series of commitments agreed to by around 20 countries at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Six of the G7 club of rich nations were among the signatories at the time -- Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the United States -- but Japan had resisted until now.

“It is good that Japan, the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, has now joined the other G7 countries in making a shared commitment to end overseas fossil fuel financing,” said Alden Meyer, senior associate at climate policy think tank E3G.

Friday’s pledge still allows for some “limited” exceptions of fossil-fuel financing so long as they are consistent with the 2015 Paris pact to curb global temperature increases. But Meyer said countries wishing to do so would face “a very stiff bar to clear”.

At their G7 talks, ministers also committed to largely end the use of fossil fuels in their electricity sectors by 2035, despite heavy tensions in the power market over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We further commit to a goal of achieving predominantly decarbonised electricity sectors by 2035,” they said.

To achieve this, member states promised to ramp up “the necessary technologies and policies for the clean energy transition” and accelerate the phase-out of coal.

The pledge was welcomed by environmental campaigners, at a time when the war in Ukraine has sent energy prices soaring and Western countries are scrambling to wean themselves off Russian imports.

“In a very difficult geopolitical situation, the G7 are united behind an end to fossil fuels by 2035 in the power sector. This is significant progress,” said David Ryfisch of the Germanwatch environmental group.

Speaking at the closing press conference, German Energy Minister Robert Habeck welcomed the pledges made by G7 nations, saying they sent a “strong signal for more climate protection”.

As well as a pledge to stop bankrolling fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of the year, Habeck highlighted the club’s agreement to ditch all “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” by 2025.

“That we reward climate-damaging behaviour, either through direct subsidies or through tax advantages... is absurd and this absurdity has to stopped,” he told reporters.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in order to maintain the goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, all financing of new fossil fuel projects must be stopped immediately.

The Oil Change International campaign group has calculated that between 2018 and 2020, G20 countries alone provided $188 billion in financing for overseas oil, coal and gas projects.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2022

G-7 pledges to phase out coal power but without fixing date

REUTERS
May 28, 2022 
From left, Kenichi Hosoda, Japan’s state minister of economy, trade and industry, Toshitaka Ooka, Japan’s state minister of the environment, German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, German Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck and Alok Sharma, president of the U.N. climate change conference COP 26, attend the closing news conference of the meeting of the G-7 Ministers for Climate, Energy and Environment in Berlin on May 27. (dpa via AP)

BERLIN--Ministers from the world's richest democracies agreed on Friday to work to phase out coal-powered energy, although they failed to set a date for doing so, and said the energy crunch brought on by Russia-Ukraine war should not derail efforts to fight climate change.

The commitment, published at the end of three days of Group of Seven (G-7) talks in Berlin, was weaker than a previous draft of the final communique seen by Reuters, which had included a target to end unabated coal power generation by 2030.

Sources familiar with the discussions said Japan and the United States had both indicated they could not support that date.

But the pledge still marked the first commitment from the G-7 countries to quit coal-fueled power. Coal is the most CO2-emitting fossil fuel and use of it needs to plummet if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The group met against the backdrop of spiraling energy costs and fuel supply worries due to the war in Ukraine. The conflict has triggered a scramble among some countries to buy more non-Russian fossil fuels and burn coal to cut their reliance on Russian supplies.

"Replacing fossil fuels from Russia has dominated the political debate and the actions of the government in the past weeks and months," German economy minister Robert Habeck said at a news conference.

"But it must be clear to us that the challenges of our political generation, limiting global warming, won't go away if we just concentrate on the present," he said. "Time is literally running out."

The G-7 also agreed to largely decarbonize their power sectors by 2035, and to stop public financing for "unabated" fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of this year, except in limited circumstances. "Unabated" refers to power plants that do not use technology to capture their emissions.

The communique made a commitment to a highly decarbonized road sector by 2030, including significantly increasing the sale, share and uptake of zero emission light duty vehicles.

The G-7 also aimed to start reporting publicly next year on how the countries are delivering on a past commitment to end "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.

SIGNIFICANT SHIFT


All G-7 countries except for Japan had made the finance pledge at the COP26 climate summit last year, and campaigners said it would be a significant shift if Japan - one of the world's biggest providers of finance for fossil fuel projects abroad - came on board.

Japan provided $10.9 billion for such projects on average per year from 2018 to 2020, with most of that spent on oil and gas, according to analysis by non-profit Oil Change International.

"If Japan implements this commitment with integrity, it will directly shift $11 billion a year from fossil fuels to clean energy and have a much larger indirect impact given Japan’s influence on other financiers in Asia and around the world," said Susanne Wong, Asia program manager at Oil Change.

By covering all fossil fuels, including oil and gas, the agreement goes further than a pledge made by G-20 countries last year to halt overseas financing for just coal.

The G-7 also pledged to take ambitious action against plastic pollution and to increase national efforts to conserve or protect at least 30% of their own coastal and marine areas by 2030.

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