Consensus on coal plant phase-out deadline eludes G-7

ANKARA

Nations in the G-7 failed to agree on a deadline to phase out coal-fired plants at a crucial meeting on Sunday, which wrapped up on Sunday in Japan's northern city of Sapporo, local Kyodo news agency reported.

Talks over the last two days between the G-7 foreign ministers focused on energy security amid the Russia-Ukraine war that began in February last year, as well as on ways to hasten decarbonization efforts, the news agency reported, citing sources from the negotiations.

Japan, which presided over the meeting, was reluctant to commit to a specific timeframe given its projected reliance on coal through at least most of the 2030s, despite a push by Britain and Canada for the resource-poor nation to drop the fossil fuel.

The ministers, meanwhile, reaffirmed the group of states' commitment to achieving "a fully or predominantly decarbonized power sector by 2035," according to a joint communique issued after the meeting.

They underlined that the commitment to accelerate the phase-out of unmitigated fossil fuels to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050 at the latest was still in place, the communique added.

This also involves at least halving carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles in the G-7 by 2035 or earlier compared to the 2000 level as a halfway point to achieving net zero emissions.

The event marked the first in a series of in-person ministerial meetings in the run-up to a forthcoming summit in May in Hiroshima with a focus on ways to reach the G-7 members' carbon neutrality targets by 2050 through a reduction in fossil fuel reliance and expanded use of renewable sources.

The gathering also comes as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN climate body, pressed for rapid action, saying in a March report that for the global temperature rise to be kept under 1.5 C compared with pre-industrial levels — the target under the 2015 Paris Agreement — the world needs to halve carbon emissions by 2030 from 2019 levels and cut them by 65% by 2035.

The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the US, plus the EU, also discussed targets over zero-emissions vehicles, Kyodo reported.

But Japan, it added, was cautious on setting a specific numerical target such as on their market volume, given that the country's major automakers are competitive in gasoline-electric and plug-in-hybrid vehicles.

Tokyo hopes to gain international backing for using hydrogen and its derivative ammonia as next-generation clean energy sources.

It plans to extensively use hydrogen, which emits only water when combusted, not only to power vehicles and homes but also reduce carbon dioxide emissions from thermal plants by mixing it with coal and gas.