by The Group of Seven nations announced on Tuesday that its member states would end coal use “without reduction” by 2035, but left the door open for countries to extend that deadline in specific contexts.
In a communiqué published after talks between the energy, climate and environment ministers in Turin, Italy, the group announced its commitment to “phase out the unabated coal power generation in our systems energy during the first half of the 2030s,” as part of climate policy progress. that G7 negotiators had previously failed to achieve in several years of talks.
But by referring to “unabated” coal, the agreement allows countries to use the fossil fuel after 2035 if their carbon pollution is captured before it enters the atmosphere.
The agreement also includes a caveat that countries could “choose a timeline that would be consistent with keeping a 1.5°C temperature rise limit within it, consistent with countries’ net zero trajectories.”
That caveat appears to allow those countries to continue using coal from 2035, as long as their overall national emissions do not contribute to global warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Science shows that some of the planet’s ecosystems will reach tipping points or struggle to adapt beyond that point.
Some members of the G7, which represent the largest economies in the developed world, are already close to ending the use of coal. Coal makes up less than 6% of the electricity mix in the UK, Italy and Canada, and almost nothing in France. But it still consists of 32% of the electricity mix of Japan, 27% of Germany and 16% of the US ‘, according to the think tank Ember.
The agreement comes just days after the US Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules that will require coal-fired power plants to capture or shut down all their climate pollutants by 2039. CNN has contacted with the White House and the State Department for comment. .
When questioned by journalists about the caveats in the G7 agreement, Italy’s Minister of the Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin defended the agreement, saying that the language shows “G7 countries commit to phase out the use of coal , without harming the economy and social of different countries. equilibrium.”
The language is weaker than what UK Minister Andrew Bowie told a reporter on Monday: that the group had agreed to phase out coal by 2035, with no reference to unabated coal or wiggle room in the timeline .
Despite the caveats, some climate policy experts welcomed the announcement, describing it as a breakthrough after years of roadblocks on the issue.
“Stamping an end date on the coal era is the kind of leadership we need from the world’s richest countries,” said Jennifer Layke, global director of energy at the World Resources Institute. “This decision provides a glimmer of hope for the rest of the world, showing that the transition from coal can happen much faster than many thought possible.”
But think tank Climate Analytics said that while the announcement would put pressure on Japan, the only G7 member that has not set an end date for coal, the 2035 deadline is too late to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Analysis by the think tank shows that all coal use in the G7 nations needs to end by 2030 at the latest – and natural gas use should end by 2035 – to prevent global warming exceed a 1.5 degree threshold.
“Many of these countries have already publicly committed to phase-out dates before 2030, and have only a small amount of coal capacity anyway,” said Jane Ellis, head of climate policy at Climate Analytics.
Notably, gas phasing out was not mentioned, Ellis said. “Over the past decade, gas has been the largest source of the global increase in CO2 emissions, and many G7 governments are investing in new domestic gas facilities. This is the wrong direction to go in – economically and for the climate.”
The G7 should make the transition to renewable energy faster, Ellis said.
Fossil fuels are the main driver of the climate crisis, and coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels. But putting an end date on coal was extremely controversial. Japan blocked progress on the issue at past G7 meetings, CNN previously reported.
Almost every country in the world agreed last year to transition from fossil fuels at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, but those negotiations were considered a shortcoming without putting an end date on coal.
The G7 usually dominates global climate policy. The group’s decisions often affect or influence the wider G20, which includes other major emitters, such as China and India, as well as major fossil fuel producers, such as Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia and Russia.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Ella Nilsen and Laura Paddison contributed to this report.
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