The industrialized countries of the Group of Seven pledged on Sunday to “acceleration” they ” exit “ Fossil fuels across all sectors, but without setting a new deadline, and we have decided to jointly aim to eliminate new plastic pollution by 2040.
The promise of an exit from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) is not, however, about those accompanied by CCS devices, specifies the press release of the Group of Seven, which has been meeting since Saturday in Sapporo (northern Japan).
sequel after announcement
Rather than an exact timeline, these major industrial nations (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy and Canada) include this goal more vaguely in their efforts to achieve energy carbon neutrality by 2050. “at the latest”.
They already committed last year to substantially decarbonising the electricity sectors by 2035, a goal reaffirmed on Sunday.
A sign of difficult negotiations, they failed to commit in particular to a date for an exit from coal in the electricity sector, while the United Kingdom, with the support of France, proposed a deadline of 2030.
Plastic waste worldwide has doubled in twenty years
On the environmental level, the G7 countries have promised to reduce additional plastic pollution to zero by 2040, thanks in particular to the circular economy, the reduction or abandonment of disposable and non-recyclable plastics.
sequel after announcement
Germany, France, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada are already part of an international coalition that made the same commitment last year. But this is the first time that the United States, Japan and Italy have joined them.
Hence it is “strong signal” Ahead of the next negotiation session on an international treaty on plastics at the end of May in Paris, Christophe Picchut welcomed the French Minister for the Environmental Transition.
The risks are critical: the amount of plastic waste in the world has doubled in twenty years, and only 9% of it is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The United Nations estimates that the amount of plastic dumped into the oceans will nearly triple by 2040.
A “support point” for the COP28 conference?
The decision to exit all fossil fuels represents a ‘strong progress’She also welcomed, in an interview with Agence France-Presse, the French Transitional Energy Minister, Agnès Pannier-Ronacher.
sequel after announcement
“It’s an important support point for being able to expand this approach.” At the G20 in India and at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai at the end of the year And It was considered recognizing that this future global negotiations “It will not be clear.”
G7 members had to show unity and volunteer following the latest troubling briefing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in March.
According to the IPCC, human-caused global warming will reach 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era from the years 2030-2035. This jeopardizes the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting temperature rises to this level, or at least well below 2°C.
