The Group of Seven (G7) is an inter-governmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition, the European Union is a ‘non-enumerated member’. Its members are the world’s largest IMF advanced economies and wealthiest liberal democracies; the group is officially organized around shared values of pluralism and representative government. As of 2020, the collective group accounts for over 50 percent of global net wealth (which is $418 trillion), 32 to 46 percent of global gross domestic product, and approximately 770 million people or 10 percent of the world’s population.
Officials from the Group of Seven wealthy nations announced Friday that they will aim to largely end greenhouse gas emissions from their power sectors by 2035. That means that it is highly unlikely that those countries will burn coal for electricity beyond that date.
Ministers from the G-7 countries meeting in Berlin also announced a target to have a “highly decarbonized road sector by 2030,” meaning that electric vehicles would dominate new car sales by the end of the decade.
At present, the increasing demand for electric vehicles is demonstrated by the sale and the oil price spike speeds up people’s transition to electric vehicles. 2021 has seen 6,75 million electric vehicle sales, 108 % more than in 2020. The global share of EVs (BEV & PHEV) in global light vehicle sales was 8,3 % almost twice that of 2020.
“The 2035 target for power sector decarbonisation is a real breakthrough. In practice, this means countries need to phase out coal by 2030 at the latest,” said Luca Bergamaschi, director of Rome-based campaign group ECCO.
Coal is a heavily polluting fossil fuel that is responsible for a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. While there are ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, experts say it is almost impossible to reduce it to zero, meaning it will likely have to be the first fossil fuel to be phased out.
G-7 members Britain, France and Italy have already set themselves deadlines to stop burning coal for electricity in the next few years. Germany and Canada are aiming for 2030; Japan wants more time; while the Biden administration has set a target of ending fossil fuel use for electricity generation in the United States by 2035.
A common target would put pressure on other major polluters to follow suit and build on the compromise deal reached at last year’s U.N. climate summit, where nations committed merely to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal — with no fixed date.
“Time is literally running out,” Habeck said, Germany’s energy and climate minister, calling climate change “the challenge of our political generation.”
Post time: May-31-2022