16th April 2023 - Climate change and energy ministers from G7 countries gathered in Sapporo, Japan during the weekend just released a communiqué in which, once again, the most advanced economies demonstrate their lack of political will to tackle the root cause of the climate crisis.

While they represent the group of countries historically responsible for climate change but also those with the most resources to face it, the G7 ministers refuse to agree on an end to any new investment in fossil fuels. Their decision not only contradicts last year's G7 commitment to end support for fossil fuels by the end of 2022, but also the repeated recommendations of the international scientific community, recently reinforced by the IPCC Synthesis Report, stating that any investments in new coal, oil or gas projects will doom the chance of reaching the Paris agreement goals.

Behind announcements of support for renewables, G7 ministers’ decision includes loophole tactics in order to allow new coal production with unproven carbon capture and storage technologies, and uses the argument of the energy fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to support new gas enterprises.

Alex Rafalowicz, Executive Director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said: “Investments in the gas or any other fossil fuel sector cross the redline of the Paris climate goals. There is no fossil fuel production that can be implemented in a manner consistent with climate objectives to keep global heating below 1.5oC. Canada, the UK, and the US are among the top 5 largest fossil fuel producers and it is their responsibility, as members of the G7, to act as true climate leaders by stopping to grow a problem they have the means to curb. It is time for them to align with science as well as with the efforts of Global South countries in the Pacific or Colombia who are working concretely to preserve our common future. Rather than endorsing new fossil fuel investments, G7 nations must support an equitable phase-out as the only real way out of the climate crisis. The young people these G7 countries are supposed to serve have made a clear demand they must listen to: no new fossil fuel investment and the development of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, the missing mechanism that will allow countries to work together to move away from coal, oil and gas, and to protect our youth and new generations.”