G7 ministerial meeting: no date for coal phase-out

At their weekend meeting in Sapporo, Japan, the G7 climate and environment ministers again spoke out for accelerating the coal phase-out. However, no year is specified in the final declaration, so it remains unclear what „accelerating“ means. It simply says to work to „predominantly or fully decarbonize“ the energy sector by 2035 and to be carbon neutral by 2050. This is not a new target and was already in the final declaration of last year’s ministerial meeting under the German presidency in almost identical wording. Thus, this year’s meeting did not result in any significant progress on the G7 countries’ coal phase-out.