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G7 nations have agreed a 2035 deadline to phase out the use of coal in their energy systems if emissions are not tracked, as rising gas supplies emerged as the next battle in climate negotiations.
After two days of meetings in Turin, energy and climate ministers pledged to phase out coal energy “in the first half of the 2030s.”
But it also gave leeway to countries that rely on coal, such as Japan and Germany, by giving the option of a “timetable consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”
It is the first time the G7 economies, which together account for more than a fifth of global emissions, have set a deadline for coal. However, the G7 countries do not include the world’s largest coal-fired power consumers, namely China and India, which added the most capacity last year.
“It is a very strong signal from the industrialized countries. “It’s a big signal to the world to reduce coal,” said Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, Italy’s environment and energy security minister.
However, the text left open the possibility of further investment in gas, despite ministers agreeing at the UN climate summit COP28 last year to switch entirely to fossil fuels by 2050. The burning of fossil fuels is by far the largest contributor to global warming.
Ministers said the “extraordinary circumstances” of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the need to shift supplies meant “publicly supported investment in the gas sector may be appropriate as a temporary response”.
The real litmus test of the G7’s credibility lies in its plans to switch from gas to renewable energy, said Luca Bergamaschi, co-founder of the Italian climate think tank ECCO.
This means cutting public support for new gas investment “after two years of record industrial profits and no evidence that Europe needs new infrastructure for its energy security,” he said.
As part of the Turin Agreement, ministers also set a global target of increasing electricity storage capacity sixfold from 2022 to 2030.
Scientific experts and climate change think tanks supported the move away from coal but were critical of the timelines.
“I don’t believe there is any measure to reduce fossil fuel use that does justice to the nature of the crisis. And we have a crisis,” said Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser and founder of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, an independent group of scientists.
Last year was the hottest year on record, both on land and at sea, and temperature records have also been set in the last ten months. The global average for the 12 months to March was 1.58°C above the pre-industrial average from 1850 to 1900. This differs from the Paris target, which calls for a long-term increase of no more than 1.5°C, measured over more than a year decade, provides.
Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s climate minister, said the agreement shows the G7 is taking seriously the outcome of the UN COP28 summit in Dubai, where countries committed to switching from all fossil fuels.
But analysts said much more work was needed to translate the plans into domestic policy, noting the document did not go far enough in terms of financing the clean energy transition.
At their next meeting in June, ministers “needed to signal their intention to help mobilize the significantly expanded financial resources that developing countries need to both decarbonize their economies and address the increasing impacts of climate change,” said Alden Meyer, senior associate at climate think tank E3G.
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