The G20 Summit in Rome ended last Sunday with the expressed intention to “accelerate our actions” to achieve net-zero emissions by the middle of the century. World leaders attending the summit offered no specific plan as to how to achieve that goal.
The conference last weekend was expected to renew the multilateral dialogue between nations after a prolonged absence due to the pandemic.
This year’s summit lacked heavyweights such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian Vladimir Putin, and Prince Mohammed Ben Salman of Saudi Arabia, who appeared by teleconference.
The G20 countries will head to COP26 in Glasgow with a minimum agreement on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels coming out of this summit. However, the agreements they reached on Sunday, 31 October in Rome left many disappointed.
The final communiqué of the G20, which was negotiated until the end of the night from Saturday to Sunday, reiterates the aim of the Paris agreement, which is to “keep the average temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius and continue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”.
The declaration goes slightly beyond the Paris agreement to limit global warming but gave no definitive date for moving away from coal or fossil fuels completely. However, the G20 countries did agree to stop subsidizing new coal-fired power plant projects “by the end of 2021”, but only abroad.
Many countries, especially emerging ones, remain highly dependent on this energy source for their electricity production, especially in the current context of the global energy crisis.
The leaders of the world’s most developed countries also agreed to “aim to mobilize together 100 billion dollars per year until 2025” to enable developing countries to cope with climate change. Learn more about the G20 Summit here.