G7 leaders agree to phase out fossil fuel use by end of century / G7 fossil fuel pledge is a diplomatic coup for Germany's 'climate chancellor'.

G7 leaders agree to phase out fossil fuel use by end of century

German chancellor Angela Merkel announces commitment to ‘decarbonise global economy’ and end extreme poverty and hunger

Kate Connolly in Garmisch Partenkirchen

Monday 8 June 2015 15.48 BST / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/g7-leaders-agree-phase-out-fossil-fuel-use-end-of-century?CMP=share_btn_fb

The G7 leading industrial nations have agreed to cut greenhouse gases by phasing out the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has announced, in a move hailed as historic by some environmental campaigners.

On the final day of talks in a Bavarian castle, Merkel said the leaders had committed themselves to the need to “decarbonise the global economy in the course of this century”. They also agreed on a global target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to a maximum of 2C over pre-industrial levels.

Environmental lobbyists described the announcement as a hopeful sign that plans for complete decarbonisation could be decided on in Paris climate talks later this year. But they criticised the fact that leaders had baulked at Merkel’s proposal that they should agree to immediate binding emission targets.

As host of the summit, which took place in the foothills of Germany’s largest mountain, the Zugspitze, Merkel said the leading industrialised countries were committed to raising $100bn (£65bn) in annual climate financing by 2020 from public and private sources.

In a 17-page communique issued after the summit at Schloss Elmau under the slogan “Think Ahead, Act Together”, the G7 leaders agreed to back the recommendations of the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate change panel, to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions at the upper end of a range of 40% to 70% by 2050, using 2010 as the baseline.

Merkel also announced that G7 governments had signed up to initiatives to work for an end to extreme poverty and hunger, reducing by 2030 the number of people living in hunger and malnutrition by 500 million, as well as improving the global response to epidemics in the light of the Ebola crisis.

Poverty campaigners reacted with cautious optimism to the news.

The participant countries – Germany, Britain, France, the US, Canada, Japan and Italy – would work on initiatives to combat disease and help countries around the world react to epidemics, including a fund within the World Bank dedicated to tackling health emergencies, Merkel announced at a press conference after the summit formally ended on Monday afternoon.

Reacting to the summit’s final declaration, the European Climate Foundation described the G7 leaders’ announcement as historic, saying it signalled “the end of the fossil fuel age” and was an “important milestone on the road to a new climate deal in Paris”.

Samantha Smith, a climate campaigner for the World Wildlife Fund, said: “There is only one way to meet the goals they agreed: get out of fossil fuels as soon as possible.”

The 350.org campaign group put out a direct challenge to Barack Obama to shut down long-term infrastructure projects linked to the fossil fuel industry. “If President Obama wants to live up to the rhetoric we’re seeing out of Germany, he’ll need to start doing everything in his power to keep fossil fuels in the ground. He can begin by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and ending coal, oil and gas development on public lands,” said May Boeve, the group’s director.

Others called on negotiators seeking an international climate deal at Paris later this year to make total decarbonisation of the global economy the official goal.

“A clear long-term decarbonisation objective in the Paris agreement, such as net zero greenhouse gas emissions well before the end of the century, will shift this towards low-carbon investment and avoid unmanageable climate risk,” said Nigel Topping, the chief executive of the We Mean Business coalition.

Merkel won praise for succeeding in her ambition to ensure climate was not squeezed off the agenda by other pressing issues. Some environmental groups said she had established herself as a “climate hero”.

Observers said she had succeeded where sceptics thought she would not, in winning over Canada and Japan, the most reluctant G7 partners ahead of negotiations, to sign up to her targets on climate, health and poverty.

Iain Keith, campaign director of the online activist network Avaaz, said: “Angela Merkel faced down Canada and Japan to say ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to carbon pollution and become the climate hero the world needs.”

The One campaigning and advocacy organisation called the leaders’ pledge to end extreme poverty a “historic ambition”. Adrian Lovett, its Europe executive director, said: “These G7 leaders have signed up ... to be part of the generation that ends extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.” But he warned: “Schloss Elmau’s legacy must be more than a castle in the air.

But the Christian relief organisation World Vision accused the leaders of failing to deliver on their ambitious agenda, arguing they had been too distracted by immediate crises, such as Russia and Greece. “Despite addressing issues like hunger and immunisation, it was nowhere as near as ambitious as we would have hoped for,” a spokeswoman said.

Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust said the proposals would “transform the resilience of global health systems”. But he said the success of the measures would depend on the effectiveness with which they could be coordinated on a global scale and that required fundamental reform of the World Health Organisation, something the leaders stopped short of deciding on.

“We urge world leaders to consider establishing an independent body within the WHO with the authority and responsibility to deliver this,” he said.

Merkel, who called the talks “very work-intensive and productive” and defended the format of a summit that cost an estimated €300m (£220m), said that the participants had agreed to sharpen existing sanctions against Russia if the crisis in Ukraine were to escalate.

She also said “there isn’t much time left” to find a solution to the Greek global debt crisis but that participants were unanimous in wanting Greece to stay in the eurozone.

Demonstrators, about 3,000 of whom had packed a protest camp in the nearby village of Garmisch Partenkirchen, cancelled the final action that had been planned to coincide with the close of the summit.

At a meeting in the local railway station, the head of Stop G7 Elmau, Ingrid Scherf announced that the final rally would not go ahead “because we’re already walked off our feet”. She denied the claims of local politicians that the group’s demonstrations had been a flop. “I’m not at all disappointed, the turnout was super,” she said. “And we also had the support of lots of locals.”

Only two demonstrators were arrested, police said, one for throwing a soup dish, another for carrying a spear.

Additional reporting by Suzanne Goldenberg

G7 fossil fuel pledge is a diplomatic coup for Germany's 'climate chancellor'

Persuading climate recalcitrants such as Japan and Canada to sign up for phasing out fossil fuels by 2100 is a significant achievement by Angela Merkel

Karl Mathiesen

Monday 8 June 2015 18.46 BST / http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/08/g7-fossil-fuel-pledge-is-a-diplomatic-coup-for-germanys-climate-chancellor

The plan outlined by the G7 on Monday to phase out fossil fuels by the end of the century is, for some member countries, not quite as ambitious as it sounds.

The US is already committed to an 83% cut in carbon emissions on 2005 levels by 2050, and the UK has set its own cuts of 80% on 1990 levels by the middle of the century.

But the agreement of the leaders of Japan and Canada, who are viewed as climate recalcitrants, is seen as a diplomatic coup for Angela Merkel, one of the longest-running players in interational climate negotations.

As environment minister in 1995, Merkel brokered a precursor to the Kyoto protocol and was dubbed the “climate chancellor” by German media early in her premiership, before financial crisis pushed her green agenda backwards.

“This does push countries, and certainly a country like Canada or Japan. I think they are not currently on a decarbonisation pathway so this definitely does pull them more into that pathway,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the global climate programme at the World Resources Institute.

“The fact that you’ve got a group who have different positions in the negotiations to come together on some of these issues is significant and somewhat surprising.”

The announcementwas warmly welcomed environment groups. “Angela Merkel took the G7 by the scruff of the neck,” said Ruth Davis a political advisor to Greenpeace and a senior associate at E3G.

Morgan praised the momentum that appears to be developing among the world’s leaders for climate action.

“Politically, the most important shift is that chancellor Merkel is back on climate change. This was not an easy negotiation. She did not have to put climate change on the agenda here. But she did,” she said.

Tom Burke, environmental advisor to Shell, Rio Tinto and Unilever, said Merkel had made a “big play”.

“It’s more aggressive than you would have expected. That’s been helped a lot by the US démarche with China and the growing signs are that China is probably going to do better than a lot of people are expected,” he said.

He said that outside the numbers, the G7’s primary function was to send signals to other countries and to markets and that the announcement today would shift things significantly.

“Everyone gets over focused on what the text of the treaty is. What really matters is what gets done in the real economy and the extent that the players in the real economy react to this signal. You’re going to shift the needle of interest in the investing community away from oil and gas and towards renewables, storage and energy efficiency. And I think that’s further than probably the oil companies had anticipated,” said Burke.

May Boeve, executive director of campaign group 350.org, agreed: “The G7 is sending a signal that the world must move away from fossil fuels, and investors should take notice.”

However, analysts were divided over whether the G7’s decarbonisation commitment would be enough to avoid dangerous climate change.

“Deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required with a decarbonisation of the global economy over the course of this century,” read the agreed text, signed by the leaders of Germany, the US, the UK, France, Italy, Canada, and Japan.

Morgan said a target of zero fossil fuels by 2100 would not keepwarming below 2C, the level agreed by governments , unless sharp cuts happen earlier in the century.

“It totally depends on the pace of the decarbonisation. You either need to be there by 2050 for CO2 and a bit later for all greenhouse gases if you want a high chance of staying below 2C. If you’re up for a 66% chance then you can go longer out into the century,” she said.

A total phase-out of fossil fuels by 2050 was momentarily on the table at last year’s UN climate conference in Lima, but swiftly disappeared.

The G7 text called for as-close-as-possible to a 70% reduction on 2010 emissions by 2050. But it also allowed for mechanisms that “increased ambition over time”. Morgan said this introduction of a mechanism to “ratchet up” targets might be the most important paragraph of the document and was “fundamental to keeping 2C within sight”.

Rodney Boyd, a policy analyst at the the London School of Economic’s Grantham Research Institute, disagreed and said if countries can meet the 70% target by 2050 it would give “an excellent chance to keep to a 2C world”.

“The feasible emissions pathway to keep the world on track for the 2C [target] needs to look roughly like this: around 35-42 GtCO2e in 2030, 20 Gt in 2050, zero by end of century,” he said. This equates to 14-29% reductions by 2030 and 60% by 2050, against 2010 levels.

Burke also noted that decarbonisation probably didn’t mean the total abnegation of fossil fuels. The world can still burn a few gigatonnes of carbon per year and remain carbon neutral by relying on natural uptake of carbon. He said the reality of the phase out would probably allow for gas being burned for heat and carbon-fuelled planes.

Royal Dutch Shell referred the Guardian to their CEO Ben van Beurden’s recent podcast interview with the newspaper in which he said: “I think we will get to the point where we have zero emissions by the end of the century, definitely, I am a firm believer in that, but even then some of the hydrocarbons that we will use and the emissions that will come from it will simply be mitigated rather than not produced.”

Boyd said the costs to the global economy of the phase out were hard to calculate. However, he said the total infrastructure costs required to keep the global economy running until 2030 would be around $90 trillion.

“Interestingly, this is similar for both the low-carbon transition (with many added benefits) or the continuation of high-carbon unsustainable route,” he said.