Environment ministers for the G7 nations called May 21 for the end of unabated coal plant development and accelerated efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
The new commitment, replacing a previous target to limit warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius, would need formal agreement among G7 leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
"We reaffirm our strong and steadfast commitment to strengthening implementation of the Paris Agreement and to unleashing its full potential," the ministers said in a joint statement.
International investments in unabated coal "must stop now", the ministers said, setting out a commitment to end direct government support for unabated coal by the end of 2021, including via official development assistance, export finance, investment, and financial and trade promotion support.
There was a global imperative to pursue efforts to limit the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that avoided climate impacts were greater at 1.5 C than 2 C, they said.
"We, G7 members, will lead by example and each commit to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible and by 2050 at the latest," they said.
The "utmost effort" would be made by all the G7 countries to submit long-term strategies setting out pathways to net zero by 2050 ahead of the COP26 meeting later this year, they said.
While ministers recognized the central role of renewables, they also chose to highlight the need for energy storage "as an enabling technology", committing to accelerate its deployment by supporting efforts to reduce costs and providing the right regulation and market structures.
The joint statement also reaffirmed ministers' commitment to eliminating fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, and address leakage of methane (fossil and biogenic) from the energy sector.
Finally, ministers vowed to promote commercial scale hydrogen from low carbon and renewable sources "across our economies, including support for fuel cell deployment globally," aiding development of an international hydrogen market.
