Environment and energy ministers from G-7 countries wrapped two days of talks in northern Japan on Sunday without acting on Canada’s push to set a timeline for phasing out coal-fired power plants.
Of their 36-page communique after the meeting in Sapporo, the ministers restated their commitment to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at the most recent, and promised to work with other countries to finish recent coal-fired power projects that do not take steps to mitigate emissions.
“We call on and can work with other countries to finish recent unabated coal-fired power generation projects globally as soon as possible to speed up the clean energy transition in a just manner,” the document says.
Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told the Japanese public broadcaster last week that he hoped to see “strong language” in the ultimate statement concerning the phaseout of coal.
The leaders as an alternative reaffirmed they need to attain a “predominantly decarbonized power sector” by 2035.
In a press release posted to Twitter Sunday, Guilbeault said he still welcomed the shared commitment between G7 countries to speed up coal phaseout, but additionally called for greater urgency.
“For Canada, phasing out coal-fired electricity generation by 2030 has never been so urgent,” the statement reads.
“Science is obvious, countries, particularly G-7, must do more and on a faster timeline to handle climate change and keep the Paris Agreement temperature goal in reach.”
Within the 2015 Paris accord, 196 countries, including Canada, agreed to set national targets to chop greenhouse gas emissions en path to stopping the planet from warming up greater than two degrees Celsius on average compared with pre-industrial levels.
Guilbeault has advocated for consensus on phasing out coal by 2030, as Canada has promised to do, but G7 environment ministers have struggled to search out common ground on the problem as countries like Japan proceed to depend on coal-powered electricity.
Japan advocated as an alternative for its own natural strategy that features the usage of what the country calls “clean coal,” where the emissions are captured.
A report released earlier this month by the Global Energy Monitor — a bunch that tracks global energy projects — found G-7 countries account for 15% of the world’s operating coal capability.
Last 12 months the worldwide capability to burn coal for power grew, though that was mainly because so many recent plants opened in China that it offset efforts to shut them down in other parts of the world, the report said.
“The reality is, coal is the primary low-hanging fruit that needs to get replaced before later,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate-change policy researcher and professor on the University of Victoria.
Weaver, who formerly led British Columbia’s Green Party, criticized the G-7 for failing to deliver strict timelines to phase out coal-powered electricity and as an alternative pointed to its 2050 net-zero pledge.
“Not a single person at that table will give you the option to be held accountable for not making that focus on, since it’s way beyond their political lifetimes, which is why it’s utterly meaningless,” he said.
While no global deadlines have been set, Debora VanNijnatten, a political scientist at Wilfred Laurier University, said individual countries have committed to their very own domestic timelines to phase out coal.
“I believe more vital is watching what is going on in individual countries as they battle serious constraints, VanNijnatten said Sunday.
The Sapporo talks also yielded pledges to cooperate on smart and equitable environmental energy, water, farm and marine policies.
“I think that we were capable of display to the international community that our commitment to climate change and environmental issues is unwavering, even within the context of the situation in Ukraine,” Akihiro Nishimura, Japan’s environment minister, said after the talks ended.
The ministers also committed to ending plastic pollution, aiming to take recent plastic pollution to zero by 2040 as a part of their priorities ahead of the G-7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima in May.
