Leaders of the G7 countries including President Obama today pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 at the G7 summit in Japan.
This new commitment comes as the seven countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US — gave more than $42 billion to coal mining and power projects between 2007 and 2015, with $2.5 billion to coal in 2015 alone, according to an NRDC report.
In the G7 Leaders’ Declaration, the countries’ leaders say they “remain committed to the elimination of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and encourage all countries to do so by 2025.”
The leaders have previously discussed a fossil fuel phase but have never before set a deadline for this to happen.
Dale Vince, founder of clean energy company Ecotricity, told the Independent that the deadline should have been 2020 and cautioned: “we have to be careful that the definition of ‘subsidy’ covers all forms of financial support, to avoid wriggling.”
In the Declaration, the G7 leaders also call on all countries to ratify the Paris climate agreement “as soon as possible” and committed to “formulate and communicate ambitions mid-century long-term low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission development strategies well ahead of the 2020 deadline.”
Additionally, the leaders urged the aviation industry to adopt plan to enable “carbon neutral growth” by 2020.
The United Nation’s aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, is expected to approve such a plan later this year. The ICAO proposed carbon pollution limits for airplanes earlier this year but did not release details of the proposal.
The G7 countries pledged a “strong commitment to work together for the adoption of a Global Market-Based Measure (GMBM)” to limit the industry’s carbon emissions.
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