The Group of Seven (G7) leaders on Saturday agreed to a set of concrete actions to accelerate the global transition away from coal generation as part of efforts to combat the climate crisis.
In a fact sheet, the White House stressed that confronting the climate crisis presents a historic opportunity to drive economic recovery, create millions of good-paying union jobs and build back better while investing in a more resilient, prosperous, equitable, and secure future.
"Recognizing that unabated coal power generation is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions globally, and consistent with President Biden's domestic leadership, G7 leaders will commit to an end to new direct government support for unabated international thermal coal power generation by the end of this year," it said.
The joint efforts by the US, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany will include a new collective commitment to provide up to USD 2 billion to support the work of the Climate Investments Funds focused on accelerating the transition from coal for key developing countries while investing in technology, job training, and infrastructure to enable the transition to a more reliable and prosperous clean energy economy.
The world leaders are also launching the G7 Industrial Decarbonization Agenda, a first-of-its-kind platform to accelerate innovation, deploy decarbonisation technology and harmonise standards. They will also emphasise sectoral decarbonisation in power, transport, agriculture, and buildings.
The White House also informed that all G7 leaders, for the first time, will align their long-term and short-term climate goals in a manner consistent with keeping the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold within reach.
The leaders will also resolve to strengthen adaptation and resilience to protect people from the impacts of climate change and to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, as well as to mobilise finance and leverage innovation to reach these goals.
According to the White House, Biden is also advancing policies domestically that will achieve carbon-pollution free energy in electricity generation by 2035.
"These policies will support scale up of technology that captures carbon and then permanently sequesters or utilizes that captured carbon, which includes lowering the cost of carbon capture retrofits for existing power plants -- all while ensuring that overburdened communities are protected from increases in cumulative pollution," it said.
Earlier, G7 leaders also launched the 'Build Back Better World' (B3W) partnership for meeting the infrastructure needs of low and middle-income countries as parts of efforts to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The scope of the initiative ranges from Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa to the Indo-Pacific.
( With inputs from ANI )
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