The industrialized countries of the G7 pledged on Sunday to “accelerate” their « sortie » fossil fuels in all sectors, but without setting a new deadline, and have decided to jointly aim for zero new plastic pollution by 2040.
The promise to get out of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) does not however concern those which are accompanied by CO2 capture and storage devices, specifies the press release from the G7, meeting since Saturday in Sapporo (northern Japan).
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Instead of a precise timetable, these major industrialized countries (United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy and Canada) more vaguely include this objective in their efforts to achieve energy carbon neutrality by 2050. ” at the latest “.
They had already committed last year to mostly decarbonize their electricity sectors by 2035, a goal reconfirmed on Sunday.
Sign of difficult negotiations, they failed to commit in particular to a date for the exit from coal in the electricity sector, while the United Kingdom, supported by France, had proposed the deadline of 2030 .
Plastic waste has doubled worldwide in twenty years
At the environmental level, the G7 countries have promised to reduce their additional plastic pollution to zero by 2040, thanks in particular to the circular economy, the reduction or abandonment of disposable and non-recyclable plastics.
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Germany, France, the EU, the UK 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.
It is thus a « signal fort » before the next negotiation session for an international treaty on plastic at the end of May in Paris, welcomed the French Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu.
The stakes are crucial: the quantity of plastic waste has doubled in the world in twenty years, and only 9% of it is actually recycled, according to the OECD. And the UN estimates that the amount of plastic dumped into the oceans will nearly triple by 2040.
“A point of support” for COP28?
The decision to get out of all fossil fuels marks a “strong progress”also welcomed in an interview with AFP the French Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
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“It is an important point of support for being able to broaden this approach” at the G20 in India and at the UN climate conference (COP28) in Dubai at the end of the year , she considered, while admitting that these future global negotiations “are not going to be obvious”.
The members of the G7 had to show unity and voluntarism after the last alarming summary report of the intergovernmental group on climate change (IPCC), published in March.
According to the IPCC, global warming caused by human activity will reach 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era from the years 2030-2035. This further jeopardizes the objective of the 2015 Paris agreement to limit the rise in temperatures to this level, or at least significantly below 2°C.
