G7 agrees to close coal-fired power plants without carbon capture by 2035

G7 countries meeting in Italy decided on Tuesday to phase out coal-fired power plants without carbon capture devices by 2035, an important step towards ending the use of fossil fuels. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel and environmental campaigners had urged the G7 - which includes Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US - to lead by example.

The G7 therefore agreed to “phase out current coal-fired electricity generation in (its) energy systems during the first half of the 2030s or in a timetable consistent with maintaining a limit on temperature increase at 1.5°C, in accordance with carbon neutrality trajectories,” the member countries announced in a press release, following a meeting of G7 Environment and Energy Ministers in Turin (north) .

Some countries like France were campaigning for the G7 to abandon coal by 2030, but Japan in particular, where a third of its electricity comes from coal, was reluctant to set a deadline. The Turin meeting was the first major political meeting on climate since COP28, held last December in Dubai, where the world pledged to gradually move away from coal, gas and oil.

The G7 countries also said on Tuesday that they “aspire” to reduce global plastic production in order to tackle head-on the global pollution caused by this material, present everywhere in the environment, from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the oceans. , as well as in the blood of human beings. “We are committed to taking ambitious action throughout the life cycle of plastics to end plastic pollution and call on the global community to do the same,” they said, without elaborating. Ottawa, Paris, Berlin and London are pushing for the adoption of a treaty to reduce plastic pollution, while Washington and Tokyo are more reluctant.

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Ministers also said efforts to raise funds to help poorer countries fight climate change should include all “countries in a position to contribute”. Climate activists are calling for more help for developing countries to decarbonize their industrial production, including the steel and cement sectors.

Under a 1992 UN climate convention, only a small handful of high-income countries, which dominated the global economy at the time, committed to funding the fight against global warming. This did not include China, which has now become the country with the highest greenhouse gas emissions. In Dubai, countries agreed to triple global renewable energy capacity and move away from fossil fuels, but financing this transition poses a problem, particularly for the poorest countries.

On Monday, at the opening of the Turin meeting, UN Climate chief Simon Stiell urged G7 countries to use their political weight, wealth and technology to move away from fossil fuels, in particular by putting pressure on their financial counterparts to achieve a “leap forward”. Together, the G7 countries represent 38% of the global economy and are responsible for 21% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to figures for 2021 from the Institute for Climate Analysis.