G-20: High hopes for climate, energy outcomes

NT Bureau, Agencies

New Delhi: As leaders gather for G20 Summit in New Delhi, experts on Thursday said securing consensus on multilateral development bank (MDB) reforms and adopting rigorous language regarding the phasing down of unabated fossil fuels could enhance India's leadership role.

G20 countries -- responsible for 85 per cent of the world's GDP and 80 per cent of the emissions -- failed to reach consensus at the energy and climate ministers' meetings in July on the phasing down of unabated use of fossil fuels, tripling renewable energy capacity to 11 terawatts by 2030 and providing low-cost financing to developing countries -- issues critical to limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

India hopes to get the governments to agree on a fossil phase down. However, if this doesn't find place in the final text, there's a risk of backsliding on the coal phase-down agreed upon at the Bali summit in the previous year.

At the G20 energy ministerial, Saudi Arabia led opposition to fossil fuel phasedown efforts, while the G7 nations had earlier committed to accelerating the phase-out of fossil fuels.

Sultan Al Jaber, the President of the next UN climate talks, has stressed that the phase-down of fossil fuels is "inevitable" but contingent upon a substantial increase in renewable energy capacity worldwide.

Experts, however, anticipate limited progress on fossil fuel discussions at the G20. RR Rashmi, Distinguished Fellow and Programme Director at The Energy and Resources Institute, said, "On the issue of fossil fuels, it is unlikely that there will be any language additional to what was agreed in Bali due to lack of global advancement and concrete action, despite India's push, ontechnology, hydrogen, blue economy, and circular economy."

T Jayaraman, Senior Fellow (Climate Change) at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, said that considering the vast diversity within the bloc, spanning from the lowest emitter, India, to the highest emitter, the US, any global targets set at the G20 must account for this differentiation and acknowledge varied national circumstances explicitly in terms of actual numbers.