SAPPORO (Japan): The Group of Seven rich nations have agreed to call for reducing gas consumption and increasing electricity from renewable sources while phasing out fossil-fuels faster and building no new coal-fired plants, France’s energy transition minister said on Saturday, Reuters reported.
G-7 environment and energy ministers, however, could not agree on a specific date to exit coal power, France’s Agnes Pannier-Runacher told reporters on the first of two days of climate and energy talks in Sapporo in northern Japan.
“The G-7 countries have agreed that the first response to the energy crisis must be to reduce energy and gas consumption… For the first time ever, the G-7 said that we must accelerate the phasing out of all unabated fossil fuels... Finally, it sent a message about accelerating renewable energy,” Pannier-Runacher said.
The G-7 decided to endorse a goal to “drastically increase electricity generated by renewable energies,” a person with knowledge of the discussions separately told Reuters, asking not to be identified because the information is not public.
Ministers also appeared to be considering numerical targets for increasing solar power capacity to at least 1 terawatt and offshore wind power capacity to 150 gigawatts by 2030, the source said.
Energy-poor Japan was pushing for investments to stay for the gas industry in order to keep the liquefied natural gas in the energy mix as a transition fuel, winning some - but not all - support from the rest of G-7.
“The imperatives on gas supply are only short-term. This implicitly means that we cannot invest in the exploration of new gas capacity,” Pannier-Runacher said, adding that nuclear energy is backed by G-7 as a “solution for the energy transition” with security of supply.
The event has also put focus on the need to help emerging countries reduce emissions, including through financing.
“We, the G-7, need to not only reduce our own emissions but also take concrete actions to achieve emission reductions globally,” Japan’s Economy and Trade Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said in his opening remarks, singling out countries in the “Global South”.
Nishimura said ministers would like to discuss ways to use finance to help reduce carbon in so-called “hard-to-abate” industries, which include chemicals, shipping
and steel.