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German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a news conference during the G7 summit at the Elmau Castle near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany, on June 8, 2015.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a news conference during the G7 summit at the Elmau Castle near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany, on June 8, 2015. Photograph: Zhang Fan/Zhang Fan/Xinhua Press/Corbis
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a news conference during the G7 summit at the Elmau Castle near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany, on June 8, 2015. Photograph: Zhang Fan/Zhang Fan/Xinhua Press/Corbis

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

This article is more than 8 years old

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

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.

Rodney Boyd, a policy analyst at the the London School of Economics’ 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.

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”.

Burke 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.

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