The Group of Seven rich nations have agreed to call for reducing gas consumption and increasing electricity from renewable sources while phasing out fossil fuels faster and building no new coal-fired plants, France's energy transition minister said, Trend reports citing TRT.
G7 environment and energy ministers, however, could not agree on a specific date to exit coal power, France's Agnes Pannier-Runacher told reporters on Saturday - the first of two days of climate and energy talks in Sapporo in northern Japan.
"The G7 countries have agreed that the first response to the energy crisis must be to reduce energy and gas consumption… For the first time ever, the G7 said that we must accelerate the phasing out of all unabated fossil fuels... Finally, it sent a message about accelerating renewable energy," Pannier-Runacher said.
Ministers also appeared to be considering numerical targets for increasing solar power capacity to at least 1 terawatt and offshore wind power capacity to 150 gigawatts by 2030, the source said.
Energy-poor Japan was pushing for investments to stay for the gas industry in order to keep the liquefied natural gas in the energy mix as a transition fuel, winning some - but not all - support from the rest of G7.
"The imperatives on gas supply are only short-term. This implicitly means that we cannot invest in the exploration of new gas capacity," Pannier-Runacher said, adding that nuclear energy is backed by G7 as a "solution for the energy transition" with the security of supply.