By Junko Horiuchi,
Ministers from the Group of Seven nations started a two-day meeting in the northern Japan city of Sapporo on Saturday, looking for ways to enhance energy security in the wake of Russia's war in Ukraine while at the same time accelerating decarbonization efforts.
Attention is focused on whether the G-7 meeting on climate, energy and environmental issues, the first in a series of in-person ministerial gatherings leading up to the group's summit in May, will achieve unity on ambitious goals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, including in the electricity and vehicle sectors.
"We are facing the challenge of promoting reforms to resolve climate change...and achieving energy security at the same time," while the economic environment is beset by uncertain energy markets and supply chain vulnerabilities, said Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is co-chairing the meeting with Environment Minister Akihiro Nishimura.
"Through the discussions, I hope that the G-7 ministers will send out a message outlining specific actions toward reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and stabilizing the energy market," he said at the outset of the opening session that was open to the media.
Environment Minister Nishimura said, "Russia's invasion of Ukraine has had a serious negative impact on global environmental and energy issues. The importance of cooperation among the G-7 countries, the leaders of the international community, is growing."
At last year's G-7 summit chaired by Germany, member states agreed to "fully or predominantly" decarbonize the power sector by 2035 but failed to agree on a specific timeline for the goal of phasing out coal power generation due to opposition from resource-poor Japan, which plans to continue using the relatively cheap fossil fuel despite the pollution it causes.
At the meeting, Britain and Canada are seeking to eliminate the phrase "predominantly" in a push for full decarbonization of the power sector by 2035, while Germany has been among the countries calling for a phasing out of coal power that is not mitigated by emissions reduction technologies, negotiation sources said.
Another focus is the G-7 ministers' commitment on promoting zero emission vehicles, including whether they will set a target for the market share of such vehicles or even a time frame for phasing out fossil-fuel vehicles.
Japan is believed to be reluctant to agree as its major automakers are strong in gasoline-electric and plug-in-hybrids.
The meeting is taking place amid growing demands for efforts to curb global warming to be speeded up, with a U.N. climate panel calling for more ambitious action in its March report, saying, "The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years."
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that for global temperature rises to be kept to 1.5 C compared with pre-industrial levels -- the target under the Paris Agreement -- the world needs to halve CO2 emissions by 2030 from 2019 levels and cut them by 65 percent by 2035.
Russia's war in Ukraine, however, has posed challenges for decarbonization, as countries that relied on oil and natural gas from Russia moved to diversify and secured stable supplies of energy, including coal, according to the International Energy Agency.
The ministers will also address how to prevent the loss of biodiversity. Negotiation sources have said the G-7 plans to set up an economic coalition aimed at achieving nature positive, or reversing nature loss.
The coalition, which will collaborate with a global group pushing for nature-related financial disclosures, will aim to help financial institutions appropriately evaluate the environmental impact of companies they are considering investing in, the sources said.
The G-7 ministers are expected to come up with guidelines to encourage companies to manufacture products that are easy to recycle, at a time when demand for rare metals is expected to increase amid the widespread use of electric vehicles.
There is also a need to ensure a transparent and sustainable supply of critical minerals to enhance energy security as the production of rare metals including lithium and cobalt is dependent on certain countries such as China.
The G-7 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States plus the European Union.
Ministers from India, chair of the Group of 20 major economies, Indonesia, chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the United Arab Emirates, the host of the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28, all for this year, have been invited to the meeting.
