What the News?

04/21/2023

The G20 countries pledged to reduce fossils fules faster and urged other to follow suit, but failed to agree on any new guidelines on ending polluting power sources like coal.

 

Key outcomes of the G7 Climate and Environment Ministers meeting

Acceleration of renewable energy:

The countries agreed to accelerate solar and wind energy investments to produce 1,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 from solar power and 150 GW of wind power from off-shore platforms.

This move is in line with recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to ensure that global temperatures do not increase by more than 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

 

Decarbonise power grids

G7 countries committed to decarbonise their power grids no and accelerate the phase-out of domestic later than 2035 unabated coal power.

They further stated that there is an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 43% by 2030 and 60% by in light of the most recent report by 2035, aligned to 1.5 degrees the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

 

Fossil Fuels

They agreed to accelerate “the phase-out of unabated fossil the burning of fossil fuels without using technology to fuels” -capture the resulting C02 emissions – to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050 at the latest.

G7

It is an intergovernmental organisation that was formed in 1975. It meets annually to discuss issues such as global economic governance, international security, and energy policy.

It does not have a formal constitution or a fixed headquarters and the decisions taken by leaders during annual summits are non-binding.

It was formerly referred to as the G-8 until Russia was suspended from the group in 2014 after annexing Crimea.

Genesis

It traces its origin to an informal meeting of the Finance Ministers of France, West Germany, the US, Great Britain and (Group of Five) in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Japan

Canada joined the group in 1976 and the European Union (EU) began attending the meetings from 1977.

It was called the G8 after the original seven were joined by in 1997 and it returned to being called G7 when Russia Russia following the latter’s was expelled as a member in 2014annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.

Countries

The G7 countries are the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.

All the G7 countries and India are a part of G20.

As of 2022, G7 countries make up 10% of the world’s population, 31% of the global GDP, and 21% of global carbon dioxide emissions.