Subscribe for insightful business news.
Just like global temperatures, tensions are heating up between G20 countries.
After several days of discussion at a summit among member states in the Indian state of Goa, a group of countries led by Saudi Arabia has blocked a proposal to eventually reduce fossil fuel use, according to a brief document released last weekend and sources who spoke with the government. financial times.
Renewal of discussions
This summer has already seen several days break global average temperatures on record. In the United States, prolonged heatwaves continue to ignite large swathes of the South and Southwest, while the Midwest and Northeast endure thick smoke billowing from massive Canadian wildfires. To prevent potentially devastating and irreversible consequences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is calling for a 43% cut in global emissions by 2030 – fearing temperatures would rise 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels (temperatures have already risen 1.1°).
In April, the G7 countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the European Union, which cumulatively account for a quarter of all global emissions, according to the International Energy Agency — agreed to accelerate their transition to renewable energy, achieving net zero power systems by 2050. But broader cooperation among G20 nations, which account for about three-quarters of global emissions, has proven difficult. China and Russia – both targeting 2060 net-zero targets – have consistently opposed calls for acceleration at past global summits. And in their latest attempt to reduce fossil fuel use in favor of renewables, Saudi Arabia and allied countries seem to have their own set of ideas:
- Rather than backing down on the use of fossil fuels, Saudi Arabia and allied countries preferred to expand the development and implementation of carbon capture technologies, the sources said. FT.
- Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, South Africa and Indonesia — all major producers of fossil fuels — have all opposed the dowry of tripling renewable energy capacity by the end of this decade, Reuters reports.
Captured Audience: However, most experts do not view carbon capture technology as an alternative to reducing emissions. While speaking with TDU earlier this summer about carbon capture technology, Howard J. Herzog, a senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative who has spent decades developing the technology, says that carbon removal technology should ideally be used to capture 5%-10% of emissions that would be difficult to eliminate:[Y]You will not be able to conduct business as usual and expect these technologies to remove all carbon emissions from the air. It’s just expensive. You have to reduce the sources of the emission center, it’s the first thing to do.”
