Guilbeault not giving up on getting a global commitment to phase out unabated fossil fuels

Facing pushback abroad and at home, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says he's not giving up on getting a global agreement to phase out unabated fossil fuels.

Guilbeault spoke with reporters Friday after wrapping up meetings in India with his international counterparts in the G20 intergovernmental forum.

He confirmed that the G20 countries, which are responsible for most of the world's carbon emissions, did not agree on phasing out unabated fossil fuels.

Unabated fossil fuels are coal, oil and gas resources that don't have mechanisms to remove the bulk of their emissions.

"Now I will be clear — our fight to keep 1.5 degrees alive continues. But we need to continue working to build consensus on the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels, which we didn't quite get here," Guilbeault told reporters.

The 2016 Paris Agreement commits countries to working toward limiting warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. The planet is inching closer to surpassing that target; the United Nations says the world already has warmed by at least 1.1 C.

According to the UN, global climate pledges have placed the world on track for a temperature rise of between 2.4 C and 2.6 C by 2100.

On Thursday, as climate scientists declared July 2023 the hottest month ever since the world began keeping temperature records, the head of the UN said humanity should be using a new term to describe the period we've entered.

"The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The hosts of the upcoming COP 28 UN climate conference in the United Arab Emirates have called for direct emissions from the oil and gas industry — scope 1 and 2 emissions — to be cut in half, and for methane emissions to be brought to near zero by 2030.

Guilbeault said the international conversation on phasing out unabated fossil fuels is still alive. He noted that G7 countries agreed to a phase-out in Japan in April — the first time a group of nations agreed on that language.

"The fact that we couldn't agree here at the G20 is not the end," Guilbeault said. "We will continue.

"(Canada has) many allies around the table, either developed or developing countries who agree that this needs to be one of the outcomes coming out of COP 28, and I'm confident we can do that."

Guilbeault did not say which countries pushed back against a phase-out. Ottawa's proposals for a gradual transition away from fossil fuels face stiff opposition from Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Both provinces criticized Guilbeault in July for reigniting the conversation during his international travels.

"Instead of seeking ways to sow investor uncertainty and reduce support for Canadian energy globally, the federal government should focus on partnering with Alberta and investing in our national energy sector to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 while simultaneously increasing energy production, jobs and economic growth for Canadians," Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said this month in a media statement.

"The Trudeau government doesn't want to just reduce emissions in our energy sector, they want to completely shut down our energy sector," said Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe in a recent tweet.

Guilbeault responded to those criticisms by noting that a phase-out of unabated fossil fuels still leaves room for some production that relies on technology — like carbon capture and storage — to reduce emissions.

He also said provinces and fossil fuel companies that have pledged either to eliminate most emissions or find ways to offset them are essentially agreeing to phase out unabated oil and gas.

"Provinces condemned the fact that I ... am talking about phasing-out of unabated fossil fuels while these same provinces have committed to being to being net zero by 2050," Guilbeault said.

"It is the same thing."

China, Saudi Arabia obstructing consensus, EU says

The G20 meetings in Chennai gave the world's biggest polluters a chance to take concrete steps ahead of a G20 leaders' meeting in September in New Delhi and the COP28 Summit in the United Arab Emirates, which starts in November.

G20 countries are responsible for around 80 per cent of planet-warming carbon emissions. 

But the meeting ended without an agreement or joint statement on Friday.

China and oil-rich Saudi Arabia backed away from making commitments in the G20 talks, members of a European delegation said.

Caroline Brouillette, the head of Climate Action Network Canada, said the world needed to see a consensus emerge from these talks.

"A global just transition away from all fossil fuels can't happen without international cooperation," she said. "The overheating planet can't afford a repeat of this when heads of state take the baton for the leaders' summit."

Catherine Abreu is a member of Canada's net-zero advisory panel and the head of Destination Zero, an international non-profit pushing for the phase-out of fossil fuels. She had a different take.

While petro-states like Saudi Arabia and Russia often block progress at climate talks, Abreu said, wealthy countries often fail to show up to these meetings or to deliver on their commitments to help emerging countries transition away from coal, oil and gas.

"Much more money needs to be put on the table to ensure that countries have the resources to adapt to the climate crisis, claw back climate emissions, and also transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy," she said.

Regardless of the pace the world moves at, Canada will be pushing ahead with its own plans to "phase out unabated fossil fuel combustion uses by 2050," Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson told CBC.

"And in some cases," he added, "they need to happen sooner."

Wilkinson said Canada has an interim target of establishing a net zero electricity grid by 2035, which will still rely on natural gas as long as the emissions are abated.

Wilkinson said most emissions "eventually" will have to be captured through abatement technology.

"When we talk about abatement, we're usually talking about combustion and the capture of carbon that comes off the combustion process. I think 90 per cent is a minimum," he said.

"There are technologies out there that can do better than that. We will need to see them in commercial operation at (a) large scale, but I think we eventually will want to be seeing 95 per cent and plus."