BERLIN (AP) — The major economies of the Group of Seven have created an international climate club open to countries that want to cooperate in the fight against global warming, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday after a video conference with other leaders of the G-7.
Germany holds the G-7 presidency until the end of the year and then passes it on to Japan.
Scholz said the new forum group “is not intended to be a G-7 initiative; rather, it must be a global company.”
“With the climate club and the socially just transition of our industries towards climate neutrality, we are making an important contribution to achieving global climate goals,” said the chancellor.
The climate club aims to support the swift and ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the German government. Monday was the seventh anniversary of the agreement’s adoption.
The club will work to help speed up the industrial transition to cleaner forms of energy and further develop emission reduction measures, the German government said.
Committed developing and emerging countries that join the club will be supported to drive the transformation of their industries.
Scholz told reporters in Berlin that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Energy Agency would establish a “climate change secretariat” now that the forum is launched.
New figures released on Monday show that Germany itself was slow to ramp up renewable energy production this year.
While the country increased its solar capacity by 10% in 2022, the amount of additional wind power capacity it installed onshore and offshore was only around 3%.
The government aims to increase offshore wind capacity from about 8 gigawatts to 20 gigawatts by 2030, but only 0.2 gigawatts of new capacity was added this year.
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